THE RECYCLABLE TRANSFER PACKAGING ROUNDTABLE
Did you know...?
2,000,000,000 lbs of mostly virgin tree fibers form cardboard boxes used to ship perishable foods to grocers, restaurants, and prepared meal producers, and they are then dumped or burned.
1,700 railcars of nonrenewable petroleum waxes are used to coat these boxes, making them nonrecyclable and noncompostable because these waxes block the screens and felts essential to forming a smooth sheet on a paper machine.
Cost competitive chemistry exists from a dozen manufacturers to substitute these wax-based water and oil based barriers
Global Green has gathered several of them in a Roundtable coalition along with those who make perishables boxes, pack them, distribute and retail their content, several recycled paper companies who want these boxes to be recyclable.
Did you know?
Typical building construction, use, and demolition, as well as the manufacturing of building materials, contribute significantly to environmental problems. In the United States, buildings account for:
36% of total energy use
65% of electricity consumption
30% of greenhouse gas emissions
30% of raw materials use
30% of waste output (equal to 136 million tons annually)
12% of potable water consumption
A typical 1700 sq. ft wood frame home requires the equivalent of clear cutting one-acre of forest
Despite all these intensive inputs, we are not constructing healthy buildings. More than 30% of buildings in the US have poor indoor air quality, a serious problem given that most people spend about 90% of their time indoors. A 1990 study by the American Medical Association and the U.S. Army found that indoor air quality problems cost U.S. businesses 150 million workdays and about $15 billion in productivity losses each year. The World Health Organization puts the losses at close to $60 billion.
By the year 2010, another 38 million buildings are expected to be constructed in the US, bringing our country’s total to over 100 million. The challenge is to build those new buildings, and renovate the older ones, in ways that reverse these unhealthy trends. Fortunately, there are ways we – as consumers, designers, builders and product manufacturers – can respond to this challenge. By building green, we can assist in preserving natural habitats, watersheds, and ecosystems, protect air and water quality, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and solid waste, all while conserving natural resources and creating healthier indoor and outdoor environments.
Green building also has tangible economic and public health benefits. These include lower operating costs via reduced energy and water utility bills, and reduced maintenance and replacement costs due to greater durability of materials. The use of non-toxic materials in residential construction is especially important in protecting children from respiratory and other diseases.
In commercial settings, green building results in improved occupant health and comfort (primarily due to indoor air quality measures and daylighting) which in turn leads to higher produc-tivity, less absenteeism, and reduced insurance costs and liability risk.
On the hierarchy of human needs, shelter is second only to food. Everyone wants a place to live. One of the best and easiest ways to lessen the impact on the planet of fulfilling that need is to build environmentally-sound structures. Not only can we improve the global environment, building green can improve your local environment.
what makes products green??????
The products and materials in Global Green USA’s Green Building Resource Center save energy, conserve water, protect natural resources, contribute to a healthy indoor environment, and reduce buildings’ impact on the community.
Because each project is different and each person’s reasons for building green are different, priorities need to be set when selecting specific products.
It is important to carefully compare the characteristics of the products displayed in the Center. The choices you make will be the result of these comparisons and often priorities differ depending on the specific environmental issues in your community. For example, in one place the most pressing concern might be overflowing landfills while in another it could be contaminated stormwater runoff. For children and some individuals, limiting exposure to toxic chemicals in the home is a major priority. Understanding these differing priorities is key in determining what green material is right for your project.
Green building is as much about design strategy as about selecting green materials.
Integrated design – thinking about how a building works as a system and designing that system to be environmentally-friendly – is a key part of green building. Certain products, particularly those that deal with energy, are not inherently green but can used in ways that enhance the environmental performance of a building. For example, a dual-pane, low-E window may not be green in terms of its material components or manufacturing process, but if used strategically it can reduce energy use by maximizing the collection of winter sunlight and blocking out the summer sun. Some design considerations that will help you choose the right materials include building orientation, use patterns, durability, and local availability.
There is no perfect green material. Trade offs are inevitable!
Building materials have multiple impacts on the environment, both positive and negative. One common way to assess these impacts is through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which considers the full range of a product’s environmental impacts, from resource extraction to manufacture and then through installation and ultimate disposal. This type of analysis allows for comprehensive and multidimensional product comparisons. With flooring for example, LCA weighs the resource-extraction impacts and durability of hardwoods with the manufacturing impacts, emissions during use and potential recyclability of carpet.
Defining whether a building material is “green” is not an exact science. But there is still a role for objective analysis and testing.
Most of the materials in the Center are included in GreenSpec, a database of approximately 2000 environmentally-friendly building products published by the Environmental Building News. GreenSpec screens its products based on standards and testing procedures established by third-party groups with an interest in green building. This scientific analysis helps to separate green products from “greenwashed” products.
Within the Center, those products which have made it through this filter are divided into five basic green building categories.
Save Energy
Products that either reduce heating and cooling loads, such as building orientation, high-quality windows, and insulation.
Products that use less energy, such as Energy Star-rated appliances, efficient heating and cooling systems and florescent lamps.
Products that produce energy, such as solar electricity generation systems.
Conserve Water
Products that conserve water above and beyond what is required by law, such as dual-flush toilets and under-sink flow restrictors
Products that consume less water, such as native landscaping and drought-tolerant plantings.
Contribute to a Safe, Healthy Indoor Environment
Products that don’t release significant pollutants into the building, such as no-VOC paints, formaldehyde-free cabinets, and non-toxic caulks, sealers and adhesives, CRI Green Label carpets and pads.
Products that block the spread of or remove indoor pollutants, such as duct mastic, effective ventilation equipment, and air and water filters.
Products that warn occupants of health hazards, such as Carbon Monoxide detectors and humidity sensors.
Protect Natural Resources
Products with recycled content, such as carpet, tile, wallboard, and wood replacements made from polystyrene.
Products made from agricultural waste material, such as wheat straw, sunflower stalks, and rice hulls.
Products that reduce material use, such as drywall clips and concrete pigments that turn concrete slabs into finished floors.
Products made from rapidly renewable materials, such as bamboo flooring, natural linoleum, cork and textiles made from wool, sisal, hemp and organic cotton.
Wood products from sustainably managed forests, certified according to the principles of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).
Salvaged products, such as bricks, lumber and plumbing fixtures.
Reduce Buildings’ Impact on the Community
Products that mitigate the effects of stormwater runoff, such as permeable pavers, green roofs and cisterns.
Products that provide easy access to alternative modes of transportation such as bike racks and storage units.
Products that do not require chemical pesticides or treatment, such as plastic lumber, physical termite barriers and native vegetation.
Products that contain no dioxin-producing polyvinylchoride (PVC) or ozone-depleting HCFCs.
WATER LESS
Fix leaky faucets and toilets (A small leak from a faucet can waste 50 gallons of water a day and a leaky toilet can waste 260 gallons a day.)
Always wash full loads of clothes and dishes. (Washing machines use 30 to 60 gallons of water for the wash cycle)
Install high efficiency showerheads, faucets and toilets. (High efficiency showerheads, which cost about $15, can reduce water use by 50%. Water efficient toilets use 50 to 80% less water.)
Water lawns and gardens in the evening or early in the morning to avoid excessive evaporation. (On average, about 35% of household water goes to tending yards)
Replant your yard with native wildflowers, shrubs, grasses and groundcovers.(Native plants are less-water intensive especially in arid climates)
Use fertilizers and pesticides sparingly and carefully. (Residential use of pesticides accounts for about 8% of all pesticide applications. Urban runoff accounts for about 14% of common water pollution and just over half of that is due to residential use of fertilizers).
SUPPORT WATER WISE PUBLIC INVESTMENTS Upgrading and repairing infrastructure can reduce the amount of water wasted in urban areas and allow cities to extend services to other areas.
As much as 60 percent of water is lost through leaky pipes.
Boston, Massachusetts avoided having to divert two large rivers to increase its water supply by repairing leaky pipes and installing water-saving fixtures in public buildings.
Water treatment plants can be modernized so that they are more efficient and recycle wastewater for non-drinking water use.
Conservation of land can help improve water quality
Protecting watersheds is less costly than trying to make polluted water safe for drinking.
Cities can also treat wastewater more inexpensively through the use of wetlands.
CHOOSE WATER WISE FOOD & FARMERS Worldwide, agriculture accounts for more than 70 percent of freshwater consumption, mainly for irrigation of agricultural crops. Farmers can make several changes in how they use irrigation water, such as switching to drip irrigation, which reduces the amount of water used by 30-70 percent while increasing crop yields. Another way to reduce the amount of water used for irrigation is to adjust our diets
Seek out and support local farmer's markets. They reduce the amount of pesticides and fungicides used on foods that wind up in our water supplies. (Of the 28 most commonly used pesticides, at least 23 are carcinogenic and wind up in our water supplies).
Eat less meat (Producing a quarter pound hamburger requires at least 100 gallons of water) (It takes 15,000 tons of water to produce a ton of beef, while a ton of grain only requires 1,000 tons).
PROTECT OUR WATERWAYS More than half of the world's major rivers are being seriously depleted and polluted. Sadly much of the pollution comes from non-point source pollution or the run-off from individuals. We can change that by:
Reduce household pollutants by cutting down and properly disposing of herbicides, pesticides and cleaning products. Never pour oil, engine fluids, cleaners or household chemicals into storm drains or down the sink.
Always be sure that used motor oil is recycled or disposed of properly.
Reduce pollution from cars and trucks. (An estimated 44 percent of water pollution comes from land-based pathways. An additional 33 percent is airborne pollution that is carried by winds)
SUPPORT SMART WATER POLICIES
Invest in smart water infrastructure and technologies
Increase environmental regulations of polluting industries
Tell government leaders to fulfill financial pledges for clean water
Ensure that water is not treated as a commodity.
Here in the United States, threats to our water supplies are exacerbated by urban and agricultural runoff, pesticide and toxic pollution, clearcutting of forests, and by overconsumption of aquifers, rivers and streams.
Recent federal proposals to relax Clean Water standards, including allowing increases of mercury pollution from power plants while reducing funding to domestic and international water conservation and pollution-prevention measures are only exacerbating the problem at home and abroad.
A recent survey found that clean fresh drinking water is more important to the majority of Americans than any other issue. While we invest billions of dollars in highways, airports and other infrastructure programs, the Bush administration has proposed cutting the EPA's Clean Water funding.
We must demand that our political leaders invest in clean water protection and take actions ourselves to reduce our water use. Fortunately, there are simple things everyone can do to conserve water and reduce pollution:
Global Green USA: Stemming Climate Change
Global Green seeks to create a value shift to reconnect humanity with the environment. For details, click here to view one-pager .
Global Green’s innovative threefold climate strategy includes:
1) SHOWING THE HUMAN FACE OF GLOBAL WARMING
Global Green USA led a scientific, political, and celebrity delegation to the Arctic that included Salma Hayek and Jake Gyllenhaal to learn more about the impacts of global warming on the Inuit people.
Global Green USA partnered with Brad Pitt to highlight the impacts of global warming on the citizens of New Orleans and call for the green rebuilding of the city.
2) ADVOCATING FOR SMART CLIMATE SOLUTIONS
Global Green promotes smart climate solutions through high-profile initiatives including its annual Red Carpet/Green Cars Oscars campaign, where celebrities arrive at the Academy Awards in fuel-efficient vehicles instead of gas-guzzling limousines.
Global Green’s “Smart Green Building Solutions” that save money and improve health and the environment have been featured on Good Morning America, the Today Show, and dozens of other national media outlets educating the public about ways they can help stop global warming.
3) DEMONSTRATING CLIMATE ACTION FOR COMMUNITIES
Global Green is pioneering efforts to build green schools and green affordable housing and is promoting solar power for low-income communities that are most impacted by the threats of global warming.
Global Green insured that Californias landmark Climate legislation incorporated provisions to benefit low-income families.
clean transportation!!!!
The 450 million vehicles on the road today account for half of the world's total consumption, generate nearly one fifth of greenhouse gas emissions, and have pervasive effects on land use and air quality. Personal transportation (i.e., home use) is responsible for 30 to 50% of greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, 33% of toxic water pollution, and over 45% of toxic air emissions. In addition, fueling passenger cars accounts for more than one quarter of world oil consumption.
Building roads for all those cars also creates a lot of environmental problems, fragmenting habitat, consuming resources for their construction, and generating water pollution from runoff. In the U.S., roads and parking lots occupy one half of urban space. That much land, if dedicated to food production, could produce enough grain to feed 200 million people per year.
Light trucks and sports utility vehicles (SUV) are all the rage today, but have severe implications for the environment. The average new light truck or SUV gets lower gas mileage and does not have the same emissions standards as a new passenger car, meaning it will emit more pollutants than a new car.
Of course, there are ways to navigate through our daily lives with less environmental impact while still enjoying the open road- with smarter driving habits, one day our roads could indeed be much more open!
global solarfund!!!!!!!
Overview
Join Global Green USA (GG USA) and Green Cross International (GCI) presented the call for a $50 billion global solar fund in Bonn at the intergovernmental Renewables 2004 conference (read press advisory). The Fund is also presented at the International Forum of Cultures ("The Peoples Forum") in Barcelona, Spain on June 2. GCI Chairman Mikhail Gorbachev is presenting the Solar Fund at the Energy Dialogues portion of the Forum to highlight a ways to drive down the cost of solar for the energy poor in the developing world, and to reduce peak demand in urban centers.
Main Objective(s)
Create sufficient funding for solar photovoltaic systems and the use of photovoltaic systems to drive down the cost.
Increase the quality of life in rural areas in the developing world.
Increase electricity system stability in urban centers worlwide.
Promote energy security and stability for a peaceful future, as well as reduce existing and future greenhouse gas and air emissions
Establish USD 50 Billion Global Solar Fund
Set a concrete global goal and vision for increasing the implementation of photovoltaic systems. (To date these goals have been established at the regional or national level).
Support photovoltaic systems, which are particularly applicable to rural areas in the developing world, as solution for 2 billion energy impoverished indviduals around the world.
Expected Results
Reduction in the price photovoltaics to below 10 cents/KWh, thus making the technology comparable to other energy generation options.
Improved quality of life in rural areas of developing countries where electricity plays a major role in imroving access to clean drinking water, and increased grid reliability in urban areas globally.
Financially feasible option for large-scale solar-generated hydrogen.
Target Area /Place
Rural areas and cities in developing world in particular Africa, urban centers in industrialized world with constrained grids, bad air pollution.
Financial Tools
The Global Solar Fund will be financed by local, regional, and national governments through a variety of financial tools. These include grants, loans, tax incentives, and development bonds.The Fund will also include industry commitments to reduced cost installations.
Monitoring Process and Time Frame
The Fund is a 10-year effort. Commitments to the Fund will be tracked by a central agency (e.g., GEF) and managed under the auspices of the United Nations. Green Cross will also monitor commitments to the Fund and advocate for additional commitments. 50% or more of the Fund will be dedicated to the energy impoverished developing world - in rural areas and cities -- through the multi-lateral central agency, and coordinated bi-lateral commitments. Installations in urban centers in industrialized countries that are funded and coordinated locally will also be tracked by the agency.
green buildings schoos and cities !!
The Green Building Cities and Schools Program is fostering sustainability within urban environments by changing patterns of natural resource consumption through four initiatives:
Greening Affordable Housing Initiative
Green Schools Initiative
Local Government Green Building Initiative
Sustainable Energy
Zero Energy Affordable Housing
Global Green USA establishes collaborative partnerships with local governments, affordable housing organizations, and other public and private entities to facilitate the development, adoption, and implementation of sustainable policies, programs, and practices. These partnerships inform and direct education, policy development, and advocacy efforts at the local, state, and federal levels. Global Green USA also partners with housing developers and public agencies to 'green' select affordable housing projects.
Over the past decade, Global Green USA has established itself as a national leader in promoting green building practices in the affordable housing community. Through our Greening of Affordable Housing Initiative (GAHI), we work extensively with non-profit community development corporations, architects, financial institutions, and government agencies at the local, state, and national level.
Green affordable housing directly benefits individuals and families in need by reducing energy bills and creating healthier living environments. Affordable housing developers and operators gain through higher quality, more efficient, and more durable buildings.
Through the Greening Affordable Housing Initiative, Global Green works to encourage the adoption of green building strategies and materials in affordable housing. Working with green building and affordable housing organizations, Global Green provides information and education on the practices and components of green affordable housing, cost issues and financial strategies, and relevant policy initiatives. Global Green has conducted over 30 workshops on greening affordable housing; facilitated over 25 green building charrettes; and authored publications and case studies.
Global Green has provided technical assistance to nearly two dozen affordable housing developers nationwide, including for the Nueva Vista Family Housing project in Santa Cruz, CA and the recently completed Plaza Apartments in San Francisco. Currently Global Green is also collaborating with the Habitat for Humanity New York City affiliate’s Atlantic Avenue project in Brooklyn, a LEED-Home pilot project.
GAHI is engaged in a range of endeavors locally and nationally to encourage the development of green affordable housing, including:
Consulting with Habitat for Humanity on their Operation Home Delivery program which will rebuild over 3,000 homes in the hurricane devastated Gulfcoast region.
Conducting design charrettes for affordable housing developers across the country.
Providing technical assistance to non-profit developers on utilizing green building strategies.
Developing and advocating for the inclusion of green building criteria in affordable housing funding mechanisms, such as the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee and the Los Angeles Housing Trust Fund.
Participating as a national partner in the Enterprise Community Partners’ Green Communities Initiative, a five-year $555 million initiative to build more than 8,500 environmentally healthy homes for low-income families.
Authoring the “Making Affordable Housing Truly Affordable” report, which provides an analysis of green building criteria in state qualified allocation plans (each state’s guidelines for allocating low-income housing tax credits) nationally.
A green school, also known as a high performance school, is a community facility that is designed, built, renovated, operated, or reused in an ecological and resource-efficient manner. Green schools protect occupant health, provide a productive learning environment, connect students to the natural world, increase average daily attendance, reduce operating costs, improve teacher satisfaction and retention, and reduce overall impact to the environment.
The Need for Green Schools: Schools districts in Southern California are embarking on a major wave of facility construction, planning to build approximately 200 new schools in the next several years. The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) alone has plans to construct 150 new schools. How these schools are built will have a tremendous impact on student performance, teacher and staff working environment, district operating and maintenance costs, and the region’s environmental quality for decades to come.
Green schools lessen the impact of building construction on the environment and set an example for future generations that environmental quality is essential to our long-term well being. They also have benefits in several key performance areas:
Protect Student and Teacher Health – Schools designed with attention to proper ventilation, material selection, acoustical quality and other indoor environmental factors, can expect improved student and teacher health and higher attendance;
Better Student Performance – Attention to site planning and adequate daylighting has been shown to heighten student performance by as much as 25%;
Lower Operating Costs – Operating costs for energy and water can be reduced by 20% to 40%, allowing more money to be used for teacher salaries, textbooks and computers;
Provide a Unique Educational Opportunity – When advanced technology and design in new schools are made visible, buildings can become teaching tools and important features of science, math, and environmental curriculum.
Global Green USA works in partnership with local governments and other public entities to demonstrate the benefits of green building, outline options for establishing green building programs that protect local quality of life and the environment, provide training for staff and constituents, and encourage the development of incentives for green building projects. Current and past partners include San Mateo County and the Cities of San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Santa Clarita, and Irvine.
GG USA's Local Government Green Building Initiative offers:
Needs Analysis and Strategic Planning
Inventory current environmental programs and policies
Set green building program priorities
Conduct outreach with building industry stakeholders
Develop program options
Assess staffing and financial impacts
Conduct Commission and Council presentations
Green Building Program Design
Determine program structure and phasing
Develop educational materials
Identify incentives for participation
Develop marketing plan
Case Studies and Design Tools
Research and write case studies
Develop green building guidelines and design tools
Prepare local green building resource guides
Workshops and Training
Green Building 101
Green Building Program and Policy Development
Overview of Green Building Materials
Strategies for Greening Affordable Housing
sustainable energy !!!
The goal of the Sustainable Energy Initiative is to build a sustainable energy future through increasing conservation, improving efficiency, and raising the percentage of renewable energy in the nation's overall energy portfolio. The initiative includes public outreach on energy-efficient practices for homes and businesses, promoting green power, working to establish rigorous energy efficiency standards for federal and state agencies, and advocating for increased investment in renewable energy technologies at the state and federal levels.
About Green Power
Green power is electricity generated from renewable sources. It includes solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, and small hydro. Renewable sources are more environmentally friendly than traditional electricity generation. Unlike fossil fuels they emit little or no air pollution and leave behind no radioactive waste like nuclear. Most importantly, they are naturally replenished by the earth and sun
Solar: Converting energy from the sun into electricity using photovoltaic panels and solar thermal plants.
Wind: Harnessing the power of the wind using turbines (wind power is the fastest growing renewable energy technology).
Geothermal: Use of steam that lies below the earth's surface to generate electricity.
Biomass: Releasing solar energy stored in plants and organic matter by burning agricultural waste and other organic matter to generate power.
Small Hydro: Use of flowing water to power electric turbines
(small hydro plants are less than 30 megawatts in size)
Find out more about green power here: http://www.epa.gov/greenpower/
What Is Brown Power?
Brown power is power generated from environmentally hostile technology. The vast majority of electricity in the United States comes from coal, nuclear, large hydro, and natural gas plants.
Brown power generators are:
The single greatest source of air pollution in the United States, contributing to both smog and acid rain.
The greatest single contributor of global climate change gases including carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide.
Consider these additional facts:
The average California household's annual use of electricity produces the same amount of smog the average car would generate if driven across country from Los Angeles to New York City, and about the same amount of global warming-causing carbon dioxide if that same car was driven a third of the way around the world.
It is estimated that 50,000 people in the United States die each year from heart and lung disease due to air pollution linked to the burning of fossil fuels to generate electricity.
zero energy aford housing----
An opportunity exists to lower the utility bill cost burden to low-income families by raising awareness and building a viable financial model for Zero Energy New Homes.
The burden energy bills present to low-income families United States is often staggeringly heavy. Families significantly below the poverty level have been shown to spend as much as 19% of their income on utility bills study. While in some areas of the United States as many as a quarter of evictions of low-income renters were due to inability to pay utility bills.
According to the California Energy Commission (CEC) approximately half of new multifamily affordable housing units constructed each year are energy efficiency enough to qualify for Energy Star certification. Further, the CEC estimates only 2% of affordable housing developers integrate renewable energy features into their projects. Low use of energy efficiency and renewable energy in affordable housing projects stems from a lack of awareness and viable financial models with which to implement these measures.
With funding from the CEC, Global Green and affordable housing partners A Community of Friends and Community Housing Works and their local utility providers, LADWP and SDGE, seek to develop zero-energy affordable housing units with off-the-shelf technology and a robust financial model that will replicable by affordable housing developers
2007年4月21日星期六
2007年4月19日星期四
Was the work of the United Nations in this crisis a success?
The United Nations’ role in the Congo crisis between 1960 and 1964 saw its largest deployment of men and some of its most controversial actions.
Many believed that it had fulfilled its four objectives. The country had not descended into civil war; Russia had been kept out of a sensitive area in Africa; the Congo was kept as a whole by the end of 1963 and political stability had been achieved. Also the United Nations had taken responsibility for the humanitarian programme needed in the Congo. Famine and epidemics had been avoided by the use of United Nations sponsored food and medical programmes.
However, not every nation was pleased by what the United Nations had done. Russia, France and Belgium refused to pay their part of the $400 million that was needed to pay for the cost of the Congo operation. This nearly pushed the United Nations to bankruptcy.
Those nations that had supported the United Nations were also critical of some parts of what the United Nations did. The role of Dag Hammerskjöld was criticised as it was felt that he had over-reached his authority regarding what the United Nations could do and what it could not. Supporters were also wary of the fact that the United Nations had taken sides in an effort to bring peace to the Congo.
Many believed that it had fulfilled its four objectives. The country had not descended into civil war; Russia had been kept out of a sensitive area in Africa; the Congo was kept as a whole by the end of 1963 and political stability had been achieved. Also the United Nations had taken responsibility for the humanitarian programme needed in the Congo. Famine and epidemics had been avoided by the use of United Nations sponsored food and medical programmes.
However, not every nation was pleased by what the United Nations had done. Russia, France and Belgium refused to pay their part of the $400 million that was needed to pay for the cost of the Congo operation. This nearly pushed the United Nations to bankruptcy.
Those nations that had supported the United Nations were also critical of some parts of what the United Nations did. The role of Dag Hammerskjöld was criticised as it was felt that he had over-reached his authority regarding what the United Nations could do and what it could not. Supporters were also wary of the fact that the United Nations had taken sides in an effort to bring peace to the Congo.
The United Nations and its problems
From 1945 to the 1970’s, the United Nations looked to be a strong successor to the failed League of Nations. Success of sorts in Korea and the Congo had boosted its international image. However, many of the problems from the Cold War it could not stem. The effective occupation of Eastern Europe by Russia made a mockery of the promises made at Yalta and other war meetings. The treatment of Hungary in 1956 could not be stopped by the United Nations. Likewise, America’s involvement in Vietnam could not be stopped.
By the end of the 1970’s the United Nations had lost some of its prestige. It was clear that the two superpowers, America and Russia, would follow the foreign policy that they wanted to regardless of what the UN wanted.
The whole issue of the relationship between America and the UN weakened the UN. Since 1945, America had been the dominant force in the UN. America provided the UN with 25% of its annual budget and expected to have a big say in final UN decisions - an influence that matched the hundred of millions of dollars America has paid into the UN’s budget. Likewise, some major international problems were dealt with by America flexing her diplomatic muscles (such as in Suez and especially in the Middle East) rather than the UN solving them.
As more and more Asian and African nations gained their independence and joined the UN, power blocs within the General Assembly have developed. These have challenged the belief that the old order of western nations should dominate the UN simply by using their financial clout and their historic connections. Seven blocs have been identified:
the Developing Nations which consists of 125 states
the Non-Aligned Movement which consists of 99 states (mostly Asian and African who avoid joining military alliances)
the Islamic Conference which consists of 41 states
the African group of 50 states
the Latin American group of 33 states
the Western European group of 22 states
the Arab group of 21 states
Within the General Assembly, all nations regardless of wealth, military power etc., have one vote. The same is true in the specialist agencies - one nation one vote. However, much of the important UN work is done in the Security Council and the five nations of Russia, America, Britain, France and China still have the right to veto a decision of the Security Council. This system has been challenged by the newer members of the UN who want one nation one vote in the Security Council as well. The five permanent members of the Security Council have fought to keep the system as it is claiming that as the five permanent members invest far more money into the UN’s budget and, as a result, should have more sway than nations that pay far less into the UN’s budget.
In 1985, this theme was even taken up by America’s Congress which declared that:
"Voting rights (in the UN) should be proportionate to the contribution of each member state to the budget of the UN and its specialised agencies."
In 1985, America provided the UN with 25% of its budget; the USSR provided 10.5%; Angola 0.01% and Saudi Arabia 0.86%. America claimed that such an investment should have its rewards. If the ‘Big Five’ withdrew their financial support or reduced it to the level of other nations in the UN, then the UN itself would face near bankruptcy. There was little the UN could do if members failed to pay their contribution. After the Congo crisis from 1960 to 1964, Russia, France and Belgium refused to contribute to the $400 million it had cost the UN to bring peace to the Congo.
Throughout the 1960’s, 1970’s and 1980’s, the UN run up debts nearly totalling $1 billion. In 1986, America refused to pay 50% of its annual contribution in protest at the influence newly emerging nations had or were attempting to get. America pointed out that 85% of the UN’s budget was paid by just 20 nations yet many smaller nations were trying to reform the way the UN was run (especially its voting system) without making the same financial commitment to the UN.
Towards the end of the 1980’s the UN appeared to have split in two: the richer old established nations that essentially funded the UN on one side and the newly established but poorer nations on the other side. These nations claimed that they were only poor because so much of their annual wealth was taken up in paying off debts to the world’s richest nations. The world’s richest nations have responded to this charge. They claim that internal corruption within these newer nations is responsible for their poverty - not the debts they owe for money borrowed.
Within just 45 years of its birth, the UN stood at a crossroads. If it divides into rich and poor nations, where does this leave the whole concept of all nations working for one common goal?
By the end of the 1970’s the United Nations had lost some of its prestige. It was clear that the two superpowers, America and Russia, would follow the foreign policy that they wanted to regardless of what the UN wanted.
The whole issue of the relationship between America and the UN weakened the UN. Since 1945, America had been the dominant force in the UN. America provided the UN with 25% of its annual budget and expected to have a big say in final UN decisions - an influence that matched the hundred of millions of dollars America has paid into the UN’s budget. Likewise, some major international problems were dealt with by America flexing her diplomatic muscles (such as in Suez and especially in the Middle East) rather than the UN solving them.
As more and more Asian and African nations gained their independence and joined the UN, power blocs within the General Assembly have developed. These have challenged the belief that the old order of western nations should dominate the UN simply by using their financial clout and their historic connections. Seven blocs have been identified:
the Developing Nations which consists of 125 states
the Non-Aligned Movement which consists of 99 states (mostly Asian and African who avoid joining military alliances)
the Islamic Conference which consists of 41 states
the African group of 50 states
the Latin American group of 33 states
the Western European group of 22 states
the Arab group of 21 states
Within the General Assembly, all nations regardless of wealth, military power etc., have one vote. The same is true in the specialist agencies - one nation one vote. However, much of the important UN work is done in the Security Council and the five nations of Russia, America, Britain, France and China still have the right to veto a decision of the Security Council. This system has been challenged by the newer members of the UN who want one nation one vote in the Security Council as well. The five permanent members of the Security Council have fought to keep the system as it is claiming that as the five permanent members invest far more money into the UN’s budget and, as a result, should have more sway than nations that pay far less into the UN’s budget.
In 1985, this theme was even taken up by America’s Congress which declared that:
"Voting rights (in the UN) should be proportionate to the contribution of each member state to the budget of the UN and its specialised agencies."
In 1985, America provided the UN with 25% of its budget; the USSR provided 10.5%; Angola 0.01% and Saudi Arabia 0.86%. America claimed that such an investment should have its rewards. If the ‘Big Five’ withdrew their financial support or reduced it to the level of other nations in the UN, then the UN itself would face near bankruptcy. There was little the UN could do if members failed to pay their contribution. After the Congo crisis from 1960 to 1964, Russia, France and Belgium refused to contribute to the $400 million it had cost the UN to bring peace to the Congo.
Throughout the 1960’s, 1970’s and 1980’s, the UN run up debts nearly totalling $1 billion. In 1986, America refused to pay 50% of its annual contribution in protest at the influence newly emerging nations had or were attempting to get. America pointed out that 85% of the UN’s budget was paid by just 20 nations yet many smaller nations were trying to reform the way the UN was run (especially its voting system) without making the same financial commitment to the UN.
Towards the end of the 1980’s the UN appeared to have split in two: the richer old established nations that essentially funded the UN on one side and the newly established but poorer nations on the other side. These nations claimed that they were only poor because so much of their annual wealth was taken up in paying off debts to the world’s richest nations. The world’s richest nations have responded to this charge. They claim that internal corruption within these newer nations is responsible for their poverty - not the debts they owe for money borrowed.
Within just 45 years of its birth, the UN stood at a crossroads. If it divides into rich and poor nations, where does this leave the whole concept of all nations working for one common goal?
The United Nations--United Thugs
R.J. Rummel
The United Nations has become a weapon and a shield for the world's dictators.
Not all dictators are the same. Some are no more than thugs. While hiding behind their guns and goons, they murder their captive citizens, condone torture (and a few even approve slavery and rape), and loot their country's wealth and resources for personal gain, for power, for an ideology, or for a religion. Of the many such thugs since 1945, the list would include Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Idi Amin of Uganda, Pol Pot of Cambodia, and recently deposed Charles Taylor of Liberia Now we have such ruling thugs as General Than Shwe of Burma, Fidel Castro of Cuba, General Teodoro Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, Ayatollah Ali Hoseini-Khamenei of Iran, Colonel Muammar al-Qadhafi of Libya, Kim Chong-il of North Korea, King Fahd Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, General Umar al-Bashir of Sudan, Bashar al-Asad of Syria, Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan, General Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, to mention some of the worst of them. These and the other thugs, along with the more moderate, but sympathetic and collaborative dictators, dominate the UN and now defeat its mission. This is a reluctant conclusion about the UN that I've come to since my early years of strong support.
To many horrified by the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the life devastating atomic bomb, when the United Nations came into being in 1945 they saw it as a global agency of peace, conflict resolution, and human rights, as I did in the 1950s to the 1980s. It is now none of this.
Out of the vast array of facts that make this case, I will select a few. But first, as one who made considerable use of UN reports, studies, and statistical services, such as the Demographic Yearbook and Statistical Yearbook, for my research, the story of the United Nations is not entirely negative. Indeed, some will make the argument that on balance the UN has contributed to the welfare of countries. But, then, one would have to downplay or ignore the political functions of the UN. These are the most important of all, since their purpose is to alleviate, resolve, and prevent the most catastrophic dangers facing humanity--international and internal war in the nuclear age, and mass democide. Now, some specifics.
ON HUMAN RIGHTS
As has been shown on this website, the promotion and protection of human rights (the essence of liberal democracy) are essential to create and secure world peace. And the premier UN body charged with doing this is the 53 member UN Commission on Human Rights. Yet, who are its members? Incredibly, the membership includes some of the worst mass murderers and violators of human rights, including Cameroon, China, Congo (DRC), Cuba, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Uganda, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. The Chairman of the Commission for 2003 is the terrorist state, Libya. And the United States, one of the best exemplars of civil rights and political liberties and foremost proponents of human rights, was kicked off the Commission for the 2002 session.
The current membership of the Commission simply reflects the continual involvement of the very human rights violators that the Commission is supposed to investigate and expose. No wonder, then, that it has been obstructed from criticizing China's human rights violations, discussing slave labor when the former Soviet Union existed, considering the sale of white women and children in Saudi Arabia, investigating the denial of the most basic human rights to women in Asia and Arab countries, and examining the slave trade in Arab countries. Recently, the Commission has voted against "special observation" of Zimbabwe's violations of human rights; and for the upgrading of the human rights status of Sudan, even while its dictatorship is committing genocide against its southern black Christians, carrying on slavery, and approving of systematic rape.
One of the recent outrages concerns Commission member Cuba. Castro had thrown into prison seventy-five dissidents, including journalists and librarians; and it had executed three men who hijacked a ferryboat to escape from this communist hellhole. No matter. The Commission reelected Cuba to another three-year term, "undoubtedly a recognition of the Cuban Revolution's work in human rights in favor of all our people," so Cuba proclaimed,
The Commission also takes overt action against those upsetting its member dictatorships. Cuba and Libya, for example, successfully pressured the body to end its consultative relationship with the free speech organization Reporters Without Borders. It had the nerve to criticize the UN's human rights record, and among its claims were that Cuba is "the world's biggest prison" (not correct--North Korea is) and "that granting the chair to Qadhafi 's [Libyan] regime has been a disgrace to the commission." One of the reforms Reporters Without Borders suggested was to restrict voting by dictatorships. This is, of course, anathema, and the Commission voted 27 to 23 to suspend its relationship with the organization, with virtually all democratic members voting against it.
ON DEMOCIDE GENERALLY AND GENOCIDE IN PARTICULAR
Cheers were loud and hopeful when the United Nations passed the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948. Here was the world body of practically all sovereign countries agreeing that genocide was a crime against humanity, and that its perpetrators should be tried and punished. Thereafter, the Convention was ignored for almost five decades.
Finally, the UN has taken action against genocide, as well as crimes against humanity, although sometimes half-heartedly. It has set up Tribunals to try perpetrators of the genocides in Rwanda and Yugoslavia (Bosnia), has agreed with Cambodia on setting up a joint tribunal to try those Khmer Rouge responsible for murdering millions of Cambodians, and has negotiated with Sierra Leone a Special Court to try perpetrators of crimes against humanity during its ten-year civil war.
Such tribunals or courts are one reason the UN's record is not entirely negative. But, and this is a very crucial but, the UN has ignored or paid nominal attention to the mass murders by most other thugs, such as those who rule Burma, Iran, Syria, and Sudan. Although with the murderers still in power a formal Tribunal may be impossible or impractical in these cases, at least they could be thoroughly investigated in the light of some of its own reports, and sanctions taken against them.
One of the most telling cases is the mass murders, and government created famine in North Korea. The country is one vast prison in which hundreds of thousands have been murdered in the last decade, and possibly three million have been starved to death. Still, except for food aid the UN is trying to provide the North Korean people, with regard to the ruling thugs responsible, the UN is like the three monkeys that see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.
Similarly with the Taliban of Afghanistan, who when they controlled the country were systematically murdering their own people, repressing all their human rights, and enslaving all woman. The UN sat on its hands despite the written reports it received from its officials in the country pointing out that the murders were ordered or approved by Mullah Omar, the Taliban ruler. Just consider the Taliban murder of 178 people in the Yakaolang district of north-central Afghanistan, where UN officials had evidence that Omar was in contact with the Taliban troops doing the democide. One UN official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, exclaimed that, "These are the same type of war crimes as were committed in Bosnia and should be prosecuted in international courts." Out of frustration that the UN was doing nothing to stop the Taliban, staff members leaked their reports to the public.
Then, consider Rwanda, in which during four months of 1994 about 800,000 people were murdered in a systematic genocide organized by the Hutu government, and carried out against the Tutsi minority by its troops, police, and specially trained death squads. In 1999, an independent report, commissioned by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and headed by former Swedish Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson, condemned the UN's reluctance to accept evidence of a genocide, and reluctance to act once the genocide was undeniable.
Perhaps the most famous case, although the genocide involved a much lower number of murdered--around 8,000 Muslim men and boys--was in Srebrenica, Bosnia, during the Bosnian war of 1995. Another UN commissioned report on this asserted that the UN peacekeepers stood by while Serb troops massacred those to whom the UN had promised protection. The UN had refused to reinforce their peacekeepers with enough troops, and even then severely restricted the action of those that were there.
Presently, there are a civil war and the mass murders in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And again, UN peacekeepers are under armed, under manned, and over restricted by rules of engagement. Some three million Congolese have been killed so far, but all UN peacekeepers have done is stand by and watch them being murdered. In response, the UN Security Council voted to deploy an additional French led 1,400 soldiers to Bunia, the capital. But, their mandate was temporarily confined to Bunia--they could not leave it to protect refugees in neighboring areas where most of the killing was taking place. As this killing escalated, the UN deployed a new force of 3,000 Pakistani and Bangladesh troops with permission to prevent killing and violence across the whole Ituri region--3,000 UN peacekeepers across a region over twice the size of Albania.
There is also Russia's Moslem Chechnya in which Russian troops and agents have carried out a campaign of democide, torture, and war crimes. In 2000 and 2001, the Human Rights Commission noted Russian abuses there and asked that the Russian government investigate them, and cooperate with UN human rights monitors. At no cost to itself from the UN, Russia has ignored these resolutions and in 2003 a similar resolution failed to get enough votes.
PEACEKEEPING
I am sure that for most of us with high hopes for the UN, we especially thought it would help resolve international disputes and help prevent or end war. This did not happen in its first decades, which many assumed was due to the Cold War. When this ended, we thought that UN peacekeeping now would take the center stage. It did not.
In its most telling Report of the Panel on UN Peace Operation (the Brahimi Report, named after the Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi who chaired the panel), the UN itself recognized that its peacekeeping has failed. It undertook peacekeeping in only a third of the conflicts during the 1990s, and even then it was not effective. This failure is now increasingly the subject of serious study and commentary. See for example, the book Deliver Us From Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords, and a World of Endless Conflict by William Shawcross.
The problem is with the fifteen member Security Council. The UN Charter explicitly empowers it to "determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression" and "make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken . . . to maintain or restore international peace and security." Each of the five permanent members of the Council, the US, France, United Kingdom, Russia, and China can veto any proposed action of the Council. China is still a communist dictatorship, and Russia is barely an electoral democracy, whose people still suffer from the absence of most civil and political rights. Either one of these countries by itself can scuttle any UN attempt to keep the peace and prevent or deal with aggression, terrorism, or democide. This veto is bad enough. But, consider. The General Assembly elects for two-year terms ten members of the Security Council. Each has one vote, and nine votes, absent a veto by a permanent member, are required to pass a substantive resolution.
The importance of this cannot be overstated. For 2003, Security Council elected members are (with freedom ranking on civil and political rights by Freedom House in parentheses, where F = free, PF = partly free, and NF = not free) Angola (NF), Bulgaria (F), Cameroon (NF), Chile (F), Germany (F), Guinea (NF), Mexico (F), Pakistan (NF), Spain (F), and Syria (NF). Of these, then, there is a five to five split between free democracies and the worst countries suppressing civil and political rights. Adding the US, United Kingdom, and France, the three permanent members rated free, to carry a resolution the eight free, democratic members must first persuade China or Russia to abstain rather than exercise their veto, and then find one absolute dictatorship to vote with them. Often times, especially when there are less free countries on the Council, this is frustrating diplomatic effort (perhaps entailing the bribery of a dictator--grants, economic aid that can be skimmed, favorable trade deals, silence on his crimes, and so on). The achievement of nine votes becomes even more difficult if any democracies abstain. Thus, Saddam Hussein, the bloody dictator of Iraq, could defy Security Council resolutions and kick out UN weapons inspectors at no cost. Finally, with Resolution 1441, the fourteenth resolution of the Security Council against Iraq, Hussein defiance posed too great a perceived danger to wait any longer and the United States led a successful military coalition against him.
WHAT ABOUT OTHER UN AGENCIES?
The dictatorships in the UN body even have frustrated UN agencies dealing with educational, economic, and health--matters seemingly removed from politics. For example, it is easy to believe that education and law are so removed, but even in this area politics can paralyze and frustrate lower UN officials. Consider this quote of the UN international Educational Development/Humanitarian Law Project: "The bald truth is that many of the most critical and pressing problems facing the international community today are due to an incomplete or inadequate or misguided or politically skewed or motivated United Nations action. While occasionally, effected governments are able to at least raise some legitimate concerns, they may be outvoted or even persuaded by undue pressure to abandon concerns."
Regarding UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO), the High Commissioner for Refugees, and other U.N. agencies, they have been very helpful in improving the lot of refugees and promoting the health of countries. Frequently, their humanitarian services have been not only valuable, but life saving. However, they would have been more effective were it not for the direct interference and demands of the dictators themselves, their representatives to the UN, or citizens in high positions within the UN (in theory, high level officials of the UN only act in the interest the UN and its policies--hardly true for those from countries ruled by absolute dictators whom they must obey, or else) A dangerous case in point has to do with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Because of the opposition of China's communist rulers Taiwan has been denied membership in WHO, although membership in this organization includes the Red Cross, Malta, and the Palestine Liberation Organization. So, when SARS struck Taiwan, help from WHO and the international community was reluctant and slow. This endangered the people of Taiwan, but fortunately, its democratic government could handle the outbreak.
As to the High Commissioner for Refugees and other relevant UN agencies, high UN officials consistently frustrate them with their political interference. In Angola, for instance, over 31 percent of the population--four million people--are internal refugees. This vast movement of refugees is due to a civil war and democide, and to Jose Santos' dictatorship and its enemy UNITA forcing people out of their homes. The UN is not protecting these people. It is failing to monitor individual cases of abuses. This is part of its refusal to confront Santos over the welfare of these refugees.
Another case of the UN's bowing before a dictatorship that has cost the lives of many refugees involves those fleeing the deadly border-to-border concentration camp that is North Korea. China not only provides no aid to these poor people, but also searches for them so that it can forcibly return them to North Korea. When returned, they are executed or imprisoned, which is execution of a more gradual kind. This, though China is obligated under the UN Refugee Convention not to return refugees to countries which may thus persecute them. On this the UN does nothing.
True, the UN has provided considerable aid to war torn areas, but not without life consuming wrangling over the details and delays. Sometimes, just the political wrangling over a resolution proposed by a democracy may cost months of delay, as it did for such aid to the Iraq occupied by the American coalition. Moreover, the UN's record of aid and administration in postwar Cambodia, Bosnia, and Kosovo have not been good.
Some other UN agencies, commissions, or conferences (really permanent bodies) are strictly political, as is the UN Conference on Disarmament. Ironically, it was announced in January of this year, when Iraq's defiance of the United Nations resolutions on its weapons of mass destruction headlined the news, that one of Saddam Hussein's henchmen would chair the May sessions of the Conference. As with virtually all UN bodies, such chairmanships are by rotation. Nonetheless, Iraq then chairing a disarmament conference is a symbol of what is wrong with the UN.
Aside from what the dictators do to the UN, it is infected by corrosive and program destroying corruption. One of the worst examples was the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Recognizing that UNESCO was riven with corruption, as well as mismanagement and politicization, the United States withdrew from it in 1984. In 2003, nineteen years later and after UNESCO instituted a number of reforms, including eliminating half of its top staff members, the United States rejoined the body.
Another serious case of corruption surrounded the UN's Oil-for-Food Program organized to allow Saddam Hussein to by bypass the UN sanctions against Iraq and sell its oil to supposedly buy food and medicine for his captive subjects. The program involved massive corruption, including kickbacks and bribes from the $2 or $3 billion Hussein skimmed from the program. Said Benon Sevan, the executive director of the Office of Iraq Program, "Everybody knew it, and those who were in a position to do something about it, were not doing anything." He excused himself by saying, "I have no power."
ISRAEL
Israel is a liberal democracy. It has as high a Freedom House score on political rights as the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom. On civil liberties, it is not as good, but still much better than the dictatorships and monarchies that surround it. Yet, and maybe partly because of this, it is the pariah in the United Nations. It is the only UN member systematically excluded from participation in virtually all the committees. For example, it has recently been rejected for membership on the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, UN Human Rights Committee, UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, UN Racial Discrimination Committee. It does serve on the UN Administrative Tribunal until December of this year. After that, Israel will be denied membership in every UN body, including the important UN's five regional groups.
Contrast this with the dictatorships of Algeria, China, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, just to mention a few of them that are members of the UN Commission on Human Rights; with the dictatorship of Egypt, which is a member of the many UN bodies, including all six concerned with human rights treaties; with the dictatorships of Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan that participate on the Governing Council of the International Labor Organization; with that the bloody dictatorship Iran that is on the five-member UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention; and with those dictatorships who treat women as second class citizens or slaves like Egypt, Iran, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates that are members of the UN Commission on the Status of Women.
But, the worst of this UN treatment of democratic Israel is its ignoring the genocide against Israeli Jews by Palestinian terrorist organizations, aided and abetted by Arab states, all dictatorships. The repeated genocide bombings of civilian Jews (103 such attacks on civilians since September 2000) going about their lives in restaurants, markets, and on buses is disregarded by the UN, while it condemns whatever Israel does to defend itself or retaliate against those responsible for this terrorism and genocide.
The October 4, 2003, bombing of the Maxim restaurant in Haifa is a case in point. On latest count, twenty men, women, children, and babies were murdered, and forty suffered diverse wounds, including the loss of limbs, that will all but destroy their lives. The bombing was planned by Islamic Jihad, which is supported by Syria. In retaliation, Israel attacked the Islamic Jihad training camp in Syria. No one was killed.
Rather then condemn the genocide of Israeli Jews, or at least investigate the killings or the Israeli attack, the only response in or by the UN was the Syrian dictator's demand through his representative for an emergency meeting of the Security Council. He got it. Syria then proposed a resolution condemning Israel. And had it not been for an American veto, the resolution would have passed.
Such treatment of a democratic member of the UN is reprehensible, and alone calls into question how much support democratic countries should give the organization.
HOW EXPLAIN THIS UN MESS?
Those that recognize that our hopes for the UN are in shambles explain this in several ways. One is that this is mainly an organizational and bureaucratic screw up. As was done with UNESCO, a thorough root and branch study of its functions, problems, and mistakes should help reform UN bodies and enable them to deal with world problems in a more even handed, efficient, and successful way. This especially will be so if UN members and people of good will help in this overdue and necessary process.
A second explanation is that while all countries are not equal in resources and capabilities, the UN assumes they are, with the one exception of the veto in the Security Council. This is its structural flaw, so it is said, and obvious when such countries as the Cameroon, Bahrain, Gabon, and Oman have an equal vote with Germany, Japan, and Spain on the Security Council, or with China and Russia on the various UN commissions. This flaw is at the root of the UN's problems. The solution is to rewrite the UN Charter to weight votes by some function of population and economic development
A third explanation is that the wealthy countries are unwilling to provide the UN with the funding, resources, and peacekeeping troops it needs to deal with global problems. Empower the UN to tax its members and call up troops from those that each member would be mandated to keep in reserve, and the UN will not only be taken more seriously, but also will be better able to prevent or resolve conflicts.
I think these explanations are inadequate. They miss the dictatorship glut. This dominates the UN through their votes and caucuses; through their henchmen filling crucial bureaucratic positions in the organization; and through their intimidation of democratic leaders with their control over oil and other resources, their strategic geographic location, their trade, or their sympathetic voting 閙igr閟 (such as the Muslims in France and Germany). These dictatorships are against human rights, they are against the UN promoting democracy, and they are against resolving any conflicts or violence that involves their power or ambitions. What we have here are the major aggressors and murderers of the world having the same UN voting rights as the democracies--the absolute dictatorships of Cuba, Liberia, and Oman have the same one vote as democratic France, Canada, and Japan.
A major conceptual error is to think of the representative of, let us say, Iran, as representing Iran. So, we think in terms of Iran having a vote, as does the representative of Italy. But, these two representatives are of different political universes. That of Iran only follows the direct or indirect orders of the mass murderer and theocratic dictator of Iran, "Supreme Leader" Ayatollah Ali Hoseini-Khamenei. The representative of Italy, however, was selected by and represents a democratic administration of Italy. It was voted into power by the people of Italy and can be voted out at the next election. Fundamentally, then, the UN representative of Italy represents the Italian people. At its simplest, what we have in the UN is the henchmen following the orders of mass murdering and criminal thugs that maintain their power over a whole country at the point of the gun formally equal to the representatives of the people of the democracies.
THE SOLUTION
I don't suggest withdrawing from the UN. It has too many useful functions, serves as a neutral forum for contact and communication between adversaries or enemies. When there is general agreement on conflicts, interventions, peacekeeping, refugees, humanitarian aid, sanctions, criminal tribunals, human rights, and so on, the UN saves lives and promotes human welfare and security. It has just done this for Iraq, where after intense American lobbying, the Security Council passed resolution 1511 unanimously. In effect, this resolution approves an international occupying force in Iraq under American authority, gives UN backing to contributions to that force and to reconstruction, recognizes a UN secondary role, and sets a deadline for the Iraqi Governing Council to submit to the Security Council a schedule for a constitution and subsequent elections. This resolution is a victory for the American coalition, but it comes only after the coalition took the initiative, acted on resolution 1441, and freed the Iraqis from the bloody tyrant that killed and repressed them.
One of these rare UN victories for freedom having been noted, what is clear to me from the UN's overall record is that given the millions dying from war, democide, famine, and poverty, the good of the organization is still much too limited by its dictatorships. Two things should be done.
A decade ago, Max Singer and Aaron Wildavsky argued in their The Real World Order--Zones of Peace, Zones of Turmoil that since democratic societies create among themselves a zone of peace (the Democratic Peace so prominent on this website), they proposed that the democracies organize in the UN a "UN Democratic Caucus" to advance the cause of democracy. I would make this broader. There should be such a caucus to deal with all issues before the UN. In the Clinton Administration there was some chatter about doing this, but except for the democracies consulting and collaborate with each other on one issue or another, nothing to make this a formal, all inclusive democratic caucus, was done then, or has been done by the Bush Administration.
Second, there should be an international governmental organization of all democracies to deal with issues about which the UN cannot or will not act, but particularly the promotion of peace, human security, human rights, and democracy. I have written on such an Alliance of Democracies, and need not say more here. Given what I have pointed out about the UN's problems, the need for such an organization is obvious. It would not compete with the UN where that body could act to promote democratic values. But, where it could not, particularly because of the opposition of the dictatorships, then the Alliance would serve a most useful cause.
There is already growing movements and governmental activities pointing in the direction of such an Alliance. Democratic activists, practitioners, academics, policy makers, and funders, have come together to cooperate in the organized international promotion of democracy. They call this a World Movement for Democracy. It has it's own website, publications, regular online Democracy News, courses, a steering committee, secretariat, and periodic assemblies. Its first and organizing Assembly was held in India in 1999; its second in Brazil in 2000 involved democrats from 93 countries. The third will be held in South Africa. The stated purpose of the organization is "to strengthen democracy where it is weak, to reform and invigorate democracy even where it is longstanding, and to bolster pro-democracy groups in countries that have not yet entered a process of democratic transition."
Then there is the new Community of Democracies. Foreign ministers and representatives of 106 governments met in Warsaw, Poland, in 2000 and concluded with the Warsaw Declaration. This expressed their unified "commitment to promote, strengthen and preserve democracy."
There also was a meeting in Warsaw of a non-governmental first "World Forum on Democracy". It included 300 democratic activists, current and former political leaders, academics, and nongovernmental organization representatives from 85 countries. Its purpose is to discuss and advance "democratic governance and values throughout the world." American Secretary of State Albright addressed the forum, and pointed out that, "We need a true democratic community; defined not by what we are against, but by what we are for; enshrined by leaders from every point on the compass; and strengthened by the full participation of civil society"
Obviously, the democracies are coming close to the Alliance that is required to advance not only democracy, but also human rights, peace and human security. All that seems needed now is for some democratic country or coalition to take the lead and convene what would amount to a founding constitutional convention of such a governmental international organization among all democracies.
The United Nations has become a weapon and a shield for the world's dictators.
Not all dictators are the same. Some are no more than thugs. While hiding behind their guns and goons, they murder their captive citizens, condone torture (and a few even approve slavery and rape), and loot their country's wealth and resources for personal gain, for power, for an ideology, or for a religion. Of the many such thugs since 1945, the list would include Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Idi Amin of Uganda, Pol Pot of Cambodia, and recently deposed Charles Taylor of Liberia Now we have such ruling thugs as General Than Shwe of Burma, Fidel Castro of Cuba, General Teodoro Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, Ayatollah Ali Hoseini-Khamenei of Iran, Colonel Muammar al-Qadhafi of Libya, Kim Chong-il of North Korea, King Fahd Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, General Umar al-Bashir of Sudan, Bashar al-Asad of Syria, Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan, General Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, to mention some of the worst of them. These and the other thugs, along with the more moderate, but sympathetic and collaborative dictators, dominate the UN and now defeat its mission. This is a reluctant conclusion about the UN that I've come to since my early years of strong support.
To many horrified by the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the life devastating atomic bomb, when the United Nations came into being in 1945 they saw it as a global agency of peace, conflict resolution, and human rights, as I did in the 1950s to the 1980s. It is now none of this.
Out of the vast array of facts that make this case, I will select a few. But first, as one who made considerable use of UN reports, studies, and statistical services, such as the Demographic Yearbook and Statistical Yearbook, for my research, the story of the United Nations is not entirely negative. Indeed, some will make the argument that on balance the UN has contributed to the welfare of countries. But, then, one would have to downplay or ignore the political functions of the UN. These are the most important of all, since their purpose is to alleviate, resolve, and prevent the most catastrophic dangers facing humanity--international and internal war in the nuclear age, and mass democide. Now, some specifics.
ON HUMAN RIGHTS
As has been shown on this website, the promotion and protection of human rights (the essence of liberal democracy) are essential to create and secure world peace. And the premier UN body charged with doing this is the 53 member UN Commission on Human Rights. Yet, who are its members? Incredibly, the membership includes some of the worst mass murderers and violators of human rights, including Cameroon, China, Congo (DRC), Cuba, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Uganda, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. The Chairman of the Commission for 2003 is the terrorist state, Libya. And the United States, one of the best exemplars of civil rights and political liberties and foremost proponents of human rights, was kicked off the Commission for the 2002 session.
The current membership of the Commission simply reflects the continual involvement of the very human rights violators that the Commission is supposed to investigate and expose. No wonder, then, that it has been obstructed from criticizing China's human rights violations, discussing slave labor when the former Soviet Union existed, considering the sale of white women and children in Saudi Arabia, investigating the denial of the most basic human rights to women in Asia and Arab countries, and examining the slave trade in Arab countries. Recently, the Commission has voted against "special observation" of Zimbabwe's violations of human rights; and for the upgrading of the human rights status of Sudan, even while its dictatorship is committing genocide against its southern black Christians, carrying on slavery, and approving of systematic rape.
One of the recent outrages concerns Commission member Cuba. Castro had thrown into prison seventy-five dissidents, including journalists and librarians; and it had executed three men who hijacked a ferryboat to escape from this communist hellhole. No matter. The Commission reelected Cuba to another three-year term, "undoubtedly a recognition of the Cuban Revolution's work in human rights in favor of all our people," so Cuba proclaimed,
The Commission also takes overt action against those upsetting its member dictatorships. Cuba and Libya, for example, successfully pressured the body to end its consultative relationship with the free speech organization Reporters Without Borders. It had the nerve to criticize the UN's human rights record, and among its claims were that Cuba is "the world's biggest prison" (not correct--North Korea is) and "that granting the chair to Qadhafi 's [Libyan] regime has been a disgrace to the commission." One of the reforms Reporters Without Borders suggested was to restrict voting by dictatorships. This is, of course, anathema, and the Commission voted 27 to 23 to suspend its relationship with the organization, with virtually all democratic members voting against it.
ON DEMOCIDE GENERALLY AND GENOCIDE IN PARTICULAR
Cheers were loud and hopeful when the United Nations passed the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948. Here was the world body of practically all sovereign countries agreeing that genocide was a crime against humanity, and that its perpetrators should be tried and punished. Thereafter, the Convention was ignored for almost five decades.
Finally, the UN has taken action against genocide, as well as crimes against humanity, although sometimes half-heartedly. It has set up Tribunals to try perpetrators of the genocides in Rwanda and Yugoslavia (Bosnia), has agreed with Cambodia on setting up a joint tribunal to try those Khmer Rouge responsible for murdering millions of Cambodians, and has negotiated with Sierra Leone a Special Court to try perpetrators of crimes against humanity during its ten-year civil war.
Such tribunals or courts are one reason the UN's record is not entirely negative. But, and this is a very crucial but, the UN has ignored or paid nominal attention to the mass murders by most other thugs, such as those who rule Burma, Iran, Syria, and Sudan. Although with the murderers still in power a formal Tribunal may be impossible or impractical in these cases, at least they could be thoroughly investigated in the light of some of its own reports, and sanctions taken against them.
One of the most telling cases is the mass murders, and government created famine in North Korea. The country is one vast prison in which hundreds of thousands have been murdered in the last decade, and possibly three million have been starved to death. Still, except for food aid the UN is trying to provide the North Korean people, with regard to the ruling thugs responsible, the UN is like the three monkeys that see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.
Similarly with the Taliban of Afghanistan, who when they controlled the country were systematically murdering their own people, repressing all their human rights, and enslaving all woman. The UN sat on its hands despite the written reports it received from its officials in the country pointing out that the murders were ordered or approved by Mullah Omar, the Taliban ruler. Just consider the Taliban murder of 178 people in the Yakaolang district of north-central Afghanistan, where UN officials had evidence that Omar was in contact with the Taliban troops doing the democide. One UN official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, exclaimed that, "These are the same type of war crimes as were committed in Bosnia and should be prosecuted in international courts." Out of frustration that the UN was doing nothing to stop the Taliban, staff members leaked their reports to the public.
Then, consider Rwanda, in which during four months of 1994 about 800,000 people were murdered in a systematic genocide organized by the Hutu government, and carried out against the Tutsi minority by its troops, police, and specially trained death squads. In 1999, an independent report, commissioned by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and headed by former Swedish Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson, condemned the UN's reluctance to accept evidence of a genocide, and reluctance to act once the genocide was undeniable.
Perhaps the most famous case, although the genocide involved a much lower number of murdered--around 8,000 Muslim men and boys--was in Srebrenica, Bosnia, during the Bosnian war of 1995. Another UN commissioned report on this asserted that the UN peacekeepers stood by while Serb troops massacred those to whom the UN had promised protection. The UN had refused to reinforce their peacekeepers with enough troops, and even then severely restricted the action of those that were there.
Presently, there are a civil war and the mass murders in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And again, UN peacekeepers are under armed, under manned, and over restricted by rules of engagement. Some three million Congolese have been killed so far, but all UN peacekeepers have done is stand by and watch them being murdered. In response, the UN Security Council voted to deploy an additional French led 1,400 soldiers to Bunia, the capital. But, their mandate was temporarily confined to Bunia--they could not leave it to protect refugees in neighboring areas where most of the killing was taking place. As this killing escalated, the UN deployed a new force of 3,000 Pakistani and Bangladesh troops with permission to prevent killing and violence across the whole Ituri region--3,000 UN peacekeepers across a region over twice the size of Albania.
There is also Russia's Moslem Chechnya in which Russian troops and agents have carried out a campaign of democide, torture, and war crimes. In 2000 and 2001, the Human Rights Commission noted Russian abuses there and asked that the Russian government investigate them, and cooperate with UN human rights monitors. At no cost to itself from the UN, Russia has ignored these resolutions and in 2003 a similar resolution failed to get enough votes.
PEACEKEEPING
I am sure that for most of us with high hopes for the UN, we especially thought it would help resolve international disputes and help prevent or end war. This did not happen in its first decades, which many assumed was due to the Cold War. When this ended, we thought that UN peacekeeping now would take the center stage. It did not.
In its most telling Report of the Panel on UN Peace Operation (the Brahimi Report, named after the Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi who chaired the panel), the UN itself recognized that its peacekeeping has failed. It undertook peacekeeping in only a third of the conflicts during the 1990s, and even then it was not effective. This failure is now increasingly the subject of serious study and commentary. See for example, the book Deliver Us From Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords, and a World of Endless Conflict by William Shawcross.
The problem is with the fifteen member Security Council. The UN Charter explicitly empowers it to "determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression" and "make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken . . . to maintain or restore international peace and security." Each of the five permanent members of the Council, the US, France, United Kingdom, Russia, and China can veto any proposed action of the Council. China is still a communist dictatorship, and Russia is barely an electoral democracy, whose people still suffer from the absence of most civil and political rights. Either one of these countries by itself can scuttle any UN attempt to keep the peace and prevent or deal with aggression, terrorism, or democide. This veto is bad enough. But, consider. The General Assembly elects for two-year terms ten members of the Security Council. Each has one vote, and nine votes, absent a veto by a permanent member, are required to pass a substantive resolution.
The importance of this cannot be overstated. For 2003, Security Council elected members are (with freedom ranking on civil and political rights by Freedom House in parentheses, where F = free, PF = partly free, and NF = not free) Angola (NF), Bulgaria (F), Cameroon (NF), Chile (F), Germany (F), Guinea (NF), Mexico (F), Pakistan (NF), Spain (F), and Syria (NF). Of these, then, there is a five to five split between free democracies and the worst countries suppressing civil and political rights. Adding the US, United Kingdom, and France, the three permanent members rated free, to carry a resolution the eight free, democratic members must first persuade China or Russia to abstain rather than exercise their veto, and then find one absolute dictatorship to vote with them. Often times, especially when there are less free countries on the Council, this is frustrating diplomatic effort (perhaps entailing the bribery of a dictator--grants, economic aid that can be skimmed, favorable trade deals, silence on his crimes, and so on). The achievement of nine votes becomes even more difficult if any democracies abstain. Thus, Saddam Hussein, the bloody dictator of Iraq, could defy Security Council resolutions and kick out UN weapons inspectors at no cost. Finally, with Resolution 1441, the fourteenth resolution of the Security Council against Iraq, Hussein defiance posed too great a perceived danger to wait any longer and the United States led a successful military coalition against him.
WHAT ABOUT OTHER UN AGENCIES?
The dictatorships in the UN body even have frustrated UN agencies dealing with educational, economic, and health--matters seemingly removed from politics. For example, it is easy to believe that education and law are so removed, but even in this area politics can paralyze and frustrate lower UN officials. Consider this quote of the UN international Educational Development/Humanitarian Law Project: "The bald truth is that many of the most critical and pressing problems facing the international community today are due to an incomplete or inadequate or misguided or politically skewed or motivated United Nations action. While occasionally, effected governments are able to at least raise some legitimate concerns, they may be outvoted or even persuaded by undue pressure to abandon concerns."
Regarding UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO), the High Commissioner for Refugees, and other U.N. agencies, they have been very helpful in improving the lot of refugees and promoting the health of countries. Frequently, their humanitarian services have been not only valuable, but life saving. However, they would have been more effective were it not for the direct interference and demands of the dictators themselves, their representatives to the UN, or citizens in high positions within the UN (in theory, high level officials of the UN only act in the interest the UN and its policies--hardly true for those from countries ruled by absolute dictators whom they must obey, or else) A dangerous case in point has to do with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Because of the opposition of China's communist rulers Taiwan has been denied membership in WHO, although membership in this organization includes the Red Cross, Malta, and the Palestine Liberation Organization. So, when SARS struck Taiwan, help from WHO and the international community was reluctant and slow. This endangered the people of Taiwan, but fortunately, its democratic government could handle the outbreak.
As to the High Commissioner for Refugees and other relevant UN agencies, high UN officials consistently frustrate them with their political interference. In Angola, for instance, over 31 percent of the population--four million people--are internal refugees. This vast movement of refugees is due to a civil war and democide, and to Jose Santos' dictatorship and its enemy UNITA forcing people out of their homes. The UN is not protecting these people. It is failing to monitor individual cases of abuses. This is part of its refusal to confront Santos over the welfare of these refugees.
Another case of the UN's bowing before a dictatorship that has cost the lives of many refugees involves those fleeing the deadly border-to-border concentration camp that is North Korea. China not only provides no aid to these poor people, but also searches for them so that it can forcibly return them to North Korea. When returned, they are executed or imprisoned, which is execution of a more gradual kind. This, though China is obligated under the UN Refugee Convention not to return refugees to countries which may thus persecute them. On this the UN does nothing.
True, the UN has provided considerable aid to war torn areas, but not without life consuming wrangling over the details and delays. Sometimes, just the political wrangling over a resolution proposed by a democracy may cost months of delay, as it did for such aid to the Iraq occupied by the American coalition. Moreover, the UN's record of aid and administration in postwar Cambodia, Bosnia, and Kosovo have not been good.
Some other UN agencies, commissions, or conferences (really permanent bodies) are strictly political, as is the UN Conference on Disarmament. Ironically, it was announced in January of this year, when Iraq's defiance of the United Nations resolutions on its weapons of mass destruction headlined the news, that one of Saddam Hussein's henchmen would chair the May sessions of the Conference. As with virtually all UN bodies, such chairmanships are by rotation. Nonetheless, Iraq then chairing a disarmament conference is a symbol of what is wrong with the UN.
Aside from what the dictators do to the UN, it is infected by corrosive and program destroying corruption. One of the worst examples was the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Recognizing that UNESCO was riven with corruption, as well as mismanagement and politicization, the United States withdrew from it in 1984. In 2003, nineteen years later and after UNESCO instituted a number of reforms, including eliminating half of its top staff members, the United States rejoined the body.
Another serious case of corruption surrounded the UN's Oil-for-Food Program organized to allow Saddam Hussein to by bypass the UN sanctions against Iraq and sell its oil to supposedly buy food and medicine for his captive subjects. The program involved massive corruption, including kickbacks and bribes from the $2 or $3 billion Hussein skimmed from the program. Said Benon Sevan, the executive director of the Office of Iraq Program, "Everybody knew it, and those who were in a position to do something about it, were not doing anything." He excused himself by saying, "I have no power."
ISRAEL
Israel is a liberal democracy. It has as high a Freedom House score on political rights as the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom. On civil liberties, it is not as good, but still much better than the dictatorships and monarchies that surround it. Yet, and maybe partly because of this, it is the pariah in the United Nations. It is the only UN member systematically excluded from participation in virtually all the committees. For example, it has recently been rejected for membership on the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, UN Human Rights Committee, UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, UN Racial Discrimination Committee. It does serve on the UN Administrative Tribunal until December of this year. After that, Israel will be denied membership in every UN body, including the important UN's five regional groups.
Contrast this with the dictatorships of Algeria, China, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, just to mention a few of them that are members of the UN Commission on Human Rights; with the dictatorship of Egypt, which is a member of the many UN bodies, including all six concerned with human rights treaties; with the dictatorships of Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan that participate on the Governing Council of the International Labor Organization; with that the bloody dictatorship Iran that is on the five-member UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention; and with those dictatorships who treat women as second class citizens or slaves like Egypt, Iran, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates that are members of the UN Commission on the Status of Women.
But, the worst of this UN treatment of democratic Israel is its ignoring the genocide against Israeli Jews by Palestinian terrorist organizations, aided and abetted by Arab states, all dictatorships. The repeated genocide bombings of civilian Jews (103 such attacks on civilians since September 2000) going about their lives in restaurants, markets, and on buses is disregarded by the UN, while it condemns whatever Israel does to defend itself or retaliate against those responsible for this terrorism and genocide.
The October 4, 2003, bombing of the Maxim restaurant in Haifa is a case in point. On latest count, twenty men, women, children, and babies were murdered, and forty suffered diverse wounds, including the loss of limbs, that will all but destroy their lives. The bombing was planned by Islamic Jihad, which is supported by Syria. In retaliation, Israel attacked the Islamic Jihad training camp in Syria. No one was killed.
Rather then condemn the genocide of Israeli Jews, or at least investigate the killings or the Israeli attack, the only response in or by the UN was the Syrian dictator's demand through his representative for an emergency meeting of the Security Council. He got it. Syria then proposed a resolution condemning Israel. And had it not been for an American veto, the resolution would have passed.
Such treatment of a democratic member of the UN is reprehensible, and alone calls into question how much support democratic countries should give the organization.
HOW EXPLAIN THIS UN MESS?
Those that recognize that our hopes for the UN are in shambles explain this in several ways. One is that this is mainly an organizational and bureaucratic screw up. As was done with UNESCO, a thorough root and branch study of its functions, problems, and mistakes should help reform UN bodies and enable them to deal with world problems in a more even handed, efficient, and successful way. This especially will be so if UN members and people of good will help in this overdue and necessary process.
A second explanation is that while all countries are not equal in resources and capabilities, the UN assumes they are, with the one exception of the veto in the Security Council. This is its structural flaw, so it is said, and obvious when such countries as the Cameroon, Bahrain, Gabon, and Oman have an equal vote with Germany, Japan, and Spain on the Security Council, or with China and Russia on the various UN commissions. This flaw is at the root of the UN's problems. The solution is to rewrite the UN Charter to weight votes by some function of population and economic development
A third explanation is that the wealthy countries are unwilling to provide the UN with the funding, resources, and peacekeeping troops it needs to deal with global problems. Empower the UN to tax its members and call up troops from those that each member would be mandated to keep in reserve, and the UN will not only be taken more seriously, but also will be better able to prevent or resolve conflicts.
I think these explanations are inadequate. They miss the dictatorship glut. This dominates the UN through their votes and caucuses; through their henchmen filling crucial bureaucratic positions in the organization; and through their intimidation of democratic leaders with their control over oil and other resources, their strategic geographic location, their trade, or their sympathetic voting 閙igr閟 (such as the Muslims in France and Germany). These dictatorships are against human rights, they are against the UN promoting democracy, and they are against resolving any conflicts or violence that involves their power or ambitions. What we have here are the major aggressors and murderers of the world having the same UN voting rights as the democracies--the absolute dictatorships of Cuba, Liberia, and Oman have the same one vote as democratic France, Canada, and Japan.
A major conceptual error is to think of the representative of, let us say, Iran, as representing Iran. So, we think in terms of Iran having a vote, as does the representative of Italy. But, these two representatives are of different political universes. That of Iran only follows the direct or indirect orders of the mass murderer and theocratic dictator of Iran, "Supreme Leader" Ayatollah Ali Hoseini-Khamenei. The representative of Italy, however, was selected by and represents a democratic administration of Italy. It was voted into power by the people of Italy and can be voted out at the next election. Fundamentally, then, the UN representative of Italy represents the Italian people. At its simplest, what we have in the UN is the henchmen following the orders of mass murdering and criminal thugs that maintain their power over a whole country at the point of the gun formally equal to the representatives of the people of the democracies.
THE SOLUTION
I don't suggest withdrawing from the UN. It has too many useful functions, serves as a neutral forum for contact and communication between adversaries or enemies. When there is general agreement on conflicts, interventions, peacekeeping, refugees, humanitarian aid, sanctions, criminal tribunals, human rights, and so on, the UN saves lives and promotes human welfare and security. It has just done this for Iraq, where after intense American lobbying, the Security Council passed resolution 1511 unanimously. In effect, this resolution approves an international occupying force in Iraq under American authority, gives UN backing to contributions to that force and to reconstruction, recognizes a UN secondary role, and sets a deadline for the Iraqi Governing Council to submit to the Security Council a schedule for a constitution and subsequent elections. This resolution is a victory for the American coalition, but it comes only after the coalition took the initiative, acted on resolution 1441, and freed the Iraqis from the bloody tyrant that killed and repressed them.
One of these rare UN victories for freedom having been noted, what is clear to me from the UN's overall record is that given the millions dying from war, democide, famine, and poverty, the good of the organization is still much too limited by its dictatorships. Two things should be done.
A decade ago, Max Singer and Aaron Wildavsky argued in their The Real World Order--Zones of Peace, Zones of Turmoil that since democratic societies create among themselves a zone of peace (the Democratic Peace so prominent on this website), they proposed that the democracies organize in the UN a "UN Democratic Caucus" to advance the cause of democracy. I would make this broader. There should be such a caucus to deal with all issues before the UN. In the Clinton Administration there was some chatter about doing this, but except for the democracies consulting and collaborate with each other on one issue or another, nothing to make this a formal, all inclusive democratic caucus, was done then, or has been done by the Bush Administration.
Second, there should be an international governmental organization of all democracies to deal with issues about which the UN cannot or will not act, but particularly the promotion of peace, human security, human rights, and democracy. I have written on such an Alliance of Democracies, and need not say more here. Given what I have pointed out about the UN's problems, the need for such an organization is obvious. It would not compete with the UN where that body could act to promote democratic values. But, where it could not, particularly because of the opposition of the dictatorships, then the Alliance would serve a most useful cause.
There is already growing movements and governmental activities pointing in the direction of such an Alliance. Democratic activists, practitioners, academics, policy makers, and funders, have come together to cooperate in the organized international promotion of democracy. They call this a World Movement for Democracy. It has it's own website, publications, regular online Democracy News, courses, a steering committee, secretariat, and periodic assemblies. Its first and organizing Assembly was held in India in 1999; its second in Brazil in 2000 involved democrats from 93 countries. The third will be held in South Africa. The stated purpose of the organization is "to strengthen democracy where it is weak, to reform and invigorate democracy even where it is longstanding, and to bolster pro-democracy groups in countries that have not yet entered a process of democratic transition."
Then there is the new Community of Democracies. Foreign ministers and representatives of 106 governments met in Warsaw, Poland, in 2000 and concluded with the Warsaw Declaration. This expressed their unified "commitment to promote, strengthen and preserve democracy."
There also was a meeting in Warsaw of a non-governmental first "World Forum on Democracy". It included 300 democratic activists, current and former political leaders, academics, and nongovernmental organization representatives from 85 countries. Its purpose is to discuss and advance "democratic governance and values throughout the world." American Secretary of State Albright addressed the forum, and pointed out that, "We need a true democratic community; defined not by what we are against, but by what we are for; enshrined by leaders from every point on the compass; and strengthened by the full participation of civil society"
Obviously, the democracies are coming close to the Alliance that is required to advance not only democracy, but also human rights, peace and human security. All that seems needed now is for some democratic country or coalition to take the lead and convene what would amount to a founding constitutional convention of such a governmental international organization among all democracies.
The Problems of the United Nations
Author: Khizer Amin
In 1945, immediately following World War II, the United Nations (UN) came into existence after a meeting between 26 victorious countries of the worldwide war. The UN was created with the aim to promote peace, heighten the standards of living, establish human rights, and settle disputes between countries without major conflicts. Its main goal was to eradicate war completely from the world. The United Nations looked like a good successor after the League of Nations, which was terminated when it failed to prevent the Second World War.
The UN started off on the right foot with success in quite a few places, including Korea and Congo. These achievements boosted the UN's respect and people started to recognize it as an organization that would really benefit human society. The UN began progressing towards gaining cooperation throughout all the countries of the world. However, there came a time when the UN started showing its drawbacks. It was not able to prevent the Cold War as both countries involved, the United States of America (U.S.A) and Russia, were permanent members of the UN. As well, the UN was not able to prevent the U.S.A. from entering Vietnam. This entrance started a huge battle known as the Vietnam War.
By the late 1970's, the United Nations had lost most of its power and appeal. “In recent years there have been many calls for reform of the United Nations. But there is little clarity, let alone consensus, about how to reform it. Some want the UN to play a greater or more effective role in world affairs, others want its role reduced to humanitarian work.” (Wikipedia, 2006) The thought was simple. People wanted the UN to change. Now, the UN just does not have what it needs to run properly and effectively. It has too many conflicts of its own to be worrying about the problems of troubled countries.
To start off with, the United Nations does not have enough of a say into today's society. They have lost too much respect from past events, and now nobody listens to them. For example, the U.S.A and Russia, which are both superpower countries, refuse to follow the UN’s foreign policies. The U.S.A defied the UN just recently, when they entered Iraq despite the United Nations plea not to. Obviously, when countries with such power ignore the UN, its status will decline rapidly, and few will think the UN is worthy of any respect.
This problem of respect stems into another more straightforward problem. If nobody supports the United Nations, there will be no funding. The UN is not a business organization; they do not make money by maintaining world peace. Rather, the UN relies on countries associated with it to help pay for the budget.
For a while now, the U.S.A has been the major provider of the UN’s budget. They have accounted for almost 25% of what the UN gets. Of course, they do not give all this money away for free. In return, the U.S.A expects a major say in the course that the UN takes. This springs corruption, because if the United Nations does not let the U.S.A make their way, they refuse to follow the United Nation’s guidelines.
To country's right now that don't want to follow the UN's policies, the organization seems more like an obstacle than a barrier. If the UN actually wants to do something, they somehow have to acquire the power to make laws that all countries must follow. Just like there is a police for people, there should be one for countries, namely the country's government. If the UN could make laws, they would be able to take much better care of the world. Of course, agreements from countries would be required to make sure what the UN sets out as rules is moderated (or the UN might try to take over the world), and so that a sort of collaborative government could be formed. Right now, the United Nations cannot make laws and, as a result, they are at a major disadvantage.
Obviously, the power to make laws and, more importantly, follow through with them cannot just come from anywhere. The power needs to be applied. Yet again, this is another place where the UN falters. They need to have some sort of army or military of their own that can enforce actions. They cannot rely on the militaries of other countries. Many experts have concluded that the major reason the League of Nations fell was because they did not have a military. Even if the United Nations just sends peacekeeping missions, they still need something to enforce what they do and make sure that when they talk, people listen.
Finally, another major drawback of the United Nations is how mixed up its Council is. The Council consists of a General Assembly, in which every country joined with the United Nations, regardless of wealth or rank, has one vote. Specialist agencies also have one vote. But, "The problem is with the fifteen member Security Council" (Runnel, 2003). Most work is done by this Council, which consists of 15 nations, five of which are permanent members. The permanent members of the Security Council are Great Britain, France, Russia, the U.S.A., and China. The other ten countries are selected and are on the council for a period of two years. In a routine matter, a minimum of nine approvals is required for the matter to be passed. In a more important matter, however, all five permanent members must approve for the matter to be passed. Therefore, one of the major countries can veto anything they think doesn't benefit them.
Basically, that means that all countries, save the major five, have no say on important matters. This needs to be changed but that is difficult with the five permanent countries around. They believe that, as they provide the most money for the UN, they should get the most say out of all the countries.
This matter can be highly controversial, because the whole point of the UN is to help countries with troubles. Of course, third-world countries would not be able to pay anywhere near to the sum that say, France or Britain pays. However, the permanent five expect the UN to benefit them although they are already well off, so how can any good be done? “If it (the UN) divides into rich and poor nations, where does this leave the whole concept of all nations working for one common goal?” (History Learning Site, 2002) Anyway it is seen, the United Nations have dug themselves into a hole.
It is quite obvious that if the United Nations wants to continue as a world-aid organization, things must change, and not just in a minor way. Extensive remediation is needed for the United Nations to get up to par. The organization needs to regain worldwide respect, acquire the power to actually do something, and sort out their Council’s conflicts. Right now the United Nations is just not doing what it was meant to do. Hopefully, better times lie ahead for the United Nations.
In 1945, immediately following World War II, the United Nations (UN) came into existence after a meeting between 26 victorious countries of the worldwide war. The UN was created with the aim to promote peace, heighten the standards of living, establish human rights, and settle disputes between countries without major conflicts. Its main goal was to eradicate war completely from the world. The United Nations looked like a good successor after the League of Nations, which was terminated when it failed to prevent the Second World War.
The UN started off on the right foot with success in quite a few places, including Korea and Congo. These achievements boosted the UN's respect and people started to recognize it as an organization that would really benefit human society. The UN began progressing towards gaining cooperation throughout all the countries of the world. However, there came a time when the UN started showing its drawbacks. It was not able to prevent the Cold War as both countries involved, the United States of America (U.S.A) and Russia, were permanent members of the UN. As well, the UN was not able to prevent the U.S.A. from entering Vietnam. This entrance started a huge battle known as the Vietnam War.
By the late 1970's, the United Nations had lost most of its power and appeal. “In recent years there have been many calls for reform of the United Nations. But there is little clarity, let alone consensus, about how to reform it. Some want the UN to play a greater or more effective role in world affairs, others want its role reduced to humanitarian work.” (Wikipedia, 2006) The thought was simple. People wanted the UN to change. Now, the UN just does not have what it needs to run properly and effectively. It has too many conflicts of its own to be worrying about the problems of troubled countries.
To start off with, the United Nations does not have enough of a say into today's society. They have lost too much respect from past events, and now nobody listens to them. For example, the U.S.A and Russia, which are both superpower countries, refuse to follow the UN’s foreign policies. The U.S.A defied the UN just recently, when they entered Iraq despite the United Nations plea not to. Obviously, when countries with such power ignore the UN, its status will decline rapidly, and few will think the UN is worthy of any respect.
This problem of respect stems into another more straightforward problem. If nobody supports the United Nations, there will be no funding. The UN is not a business organization; they do not make money by maintaining world peace. Rather, the UN relies on countries associated with it to help pay for the budget.
For a while now, the U.S.A has been the major provider of the UN’s budget. They have accounted for almost 25% of what the UN gets. Of course, they do not give all this money away for free. In return, the U.S.A expects a major say in the course that the UN takes. This springs corruption, because if the United Nations does not let the U.S.A make their way, they refuse to follow the United Nation’s guidelines.
To country's right now that don't want to follow the UN's policies, the organization seems more like an obstacle than a barrier. If the UN actually wants to do something, they somehow have to acquire the power to make laws that all countries must follow. Just like there is a police for people, there should be one for countries, namely the country's government. If the UN could make laws, they would be able to take much better care of the world. Of course, agreements from countries would be required to make sure what the UN sets out as rules is moderated (or the UN might try to take over the world), and so that a sort of collaborative government could be formed. Right now, the United Nations cannot make laws and, as a result, they are at a major disadvantage.
Obviously, the power to make laws and, more importantly, follow through with them cannot just come from anywhere. The power needs to be applied. Yet again, this is another place where the UN falters. They need to have some sort of army or military of their own that can enforce actions. They cannot rely on the militaries of other countries. Many experts have concluded that the major reason the League of Nations fell was because they did not have a military. Even if the United Nations just sends peacekeeping missions, they still need something to enforce what they do and make sure that when they talk, people listen.
Finally, another major drawback of the United Nations is how mixed up its Council is. The Council consists of a General Assembly, in which every country joined with the United Nations, regardless of wealth or rank, has one vote. Specialist agencies also have one vote. But, "The problem is with the fifteen member Security Council" (Runnel, 2003). Most work is done by this Council, which consists of 15 nations, five of which are permanent members. The permanent members of the Security Council are Great Britain, France, Russia, the U.S.A., and China. The other ten countries are selected and are on the council for a period of two years. In a routine matter, a minimum of nine approvals is required for the matter to be passed. In a more important matter, however, all five permanent members must approve for the matter to be passed. Therefore, one of the major countries can veto anything they think doesn't benefit them.
Basically, that means that all countries, save the major five, have no say on important matters. This needs to be changed but that is difficult with the five permanent countries around. They believe that, as they provide the most money for the UN, they should get the most say out of all the countries.
This matter can be highly controversial, because the whole point of the UN is to help countries with troubles. Of course, third-world countries would not be able to pay anywhere near to the sum that say, France or Britain pays. However, the permanent five expect the UN to benefit them although they are already well off, so how can any good be done? “If it (the UN) divides into rich and poor nations, where does this leave the whole concept of all nations working for one common goal?” (History Learning Site, 2002) Anyway it is seen, the United Nations have dug themselves into a hole.
It is quite obvious that if the United Nations wants to continue as a world-aid organization, things must change, and not just in a minor way. Extensive remediation is needed for the United Nations to get up to par. The organization needs to regain worldwide respect, acquire the power to actually do something, and sort out their Council’s conflicts. Right now the United Nations is just not doing what it was meant to do. Hopefully, better times lie ahead for the United Nations.
Climate change impacts range:
affecting agriculture-
further endangering food security-,
sea-level rise
and the accelerated erosion of coastal zones,
increasing intensity of natural disasters,
species extinction and
the spread of vector-borne diseases.
Climate Change Outreach Programme
Responding to the needs of the countries and following the request from the UNFCCC Secretariat, UNEP/DEC has initiated and implemented a major programme on climate change outreach that directly supported the UNFCCC New Delhi Work Programme on Article 6 (Education, Training and Public Awareness) The objectives of this project are to provide to governments additional tools for promoting climate change awareness at the national level. Support efforts by associations and NGOs to provide accurate and accessible messages of IPCC on climate change to their memberships or target audiences, make the youth more aware of the climate change implications and motivated to take relevant climate friendly actions, and raise awareness of general public on climate change problems with easily understandable graphic materials. Project partners include the Governments of Kenya, Ghana , Namibia , Russia , Uzbekistan , Mexico , Albania , Georgia, the UNFCCC and IPCC Secretariats, WWF, TERI, the Government of Norway and other donors.
National Climate Outreach Campaigns
Those campaigns have been implemented in Namibia , Ghana , Kenya , Russia , Uzbekistan , Albania and Georgia . Each campaign identified local needs and priorities for implementing national-level Article 6 activities, promoted collaboration and networking among focal points and key stakeholders, produced popular brochures and booklets in local languages, organized radio and TV presentations on hot climate topics – and much more. In Latin America UNEP/DEC supported publication of a Handbook on Climate Change Communica-tions for local practitioners that was successfully tested at a regional workshop with participants from 10 countries of the region.
Climate Outreach to Youth
UNEP has entered into a partnership with TERI Institute ( India ) to promote environmental education among the school children in India . This programme covered more than 100 schools in 8 states of the country and featured establishing school climate clubs, workshops and seminars for children, arranging climate-related shows and presentations and compiling guide books on climate change for teachers.
Support to UNFCCC Regional Workshops on Article 6
To facilitate successful implementation of New Delhi Work Programme, UNFCCC Secretariat organizes workshops on Article 6 for various geographical regions where representatives of local countries discuss common problems of climate change outreach identify barriers to strengthening Article 6 activities and explore opportunities and strategies for overcoming these barriers. UNEP co-sponsored and co-organized regional workshop for Africa , Latin America and the Caribbean , and for Asia-Pacific, and also organized a similar workshop for countries of the former Soviet Union .
Adapting to Climate Change
UNEP and the Inter-Centre Working Group on Climate Change of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) have proposed a joint project on improving the science-policy link. UNEP is also supporting the development of criteria and indicators for assessing ecological and economic vulnerabilities to climate change and capacities for adapting at the regional level. Many of these criteria and indicators relate to key sectors for biodiversity, agriculture and water. UNEP is also developing a handbook on cost-effective adaptation strategies for agricultural productivity for main-streaming adaptation in agriculture. Through its GEF-funded project on the Assessment of Impacts of and Adaptation to Climate Change in Multiple Regions and Sectors, UNEP is enhancing scientific and technical capacities in over 45 countries, mostly in Africa .
Supporting the IPCC
UNEP together with WMO provides the joint secretariat support to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its bureau and working groups, including facilitating the participation of developing countries and countries with economies in transition in IPCC.The IPCC has three Working Groups and a Task Force:
Working Group I assesses the scientific aspects of the climate system and climate change.
Working Group II assesses the vulnerability of socio-economic and natural systems to climate change, negative and positive consequences of climate change, and options for adapting to it.
Working Group III assesses options for limiting greenhouse gas emissions and otherwise mitigating climate change.
The Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories is responsible for the IPCC National Greenhouse Gas Inventories Programme.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports and supporting materials
Future Perspectives
The eleventh Conference of the Parties to the Convention (COP-11) and the first Meeting of the Par-ties to the Protocol (COP/MOP-1) Montreal in December 2005, launched two parallel tracks for future global action addressing climate change. First, an open-ended ad-hoc working group, established under the Protocol, and second, a non-negotiating “dialogue on long-term cooperative action” was initiated under the Convention. UNEP will support both tracks agreed in Montreal for the follow-up process. Hopefully the two tracks will eventually (after 2008) converge and lead to a new set of legally binding measures. At this stage, only the Kyoto track is clearly on course for binding targets. The centrality of multilateral framework represented by UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol needs to be fully supported. However, all other initiatives that help in anyway to address this challenge, including those initiatives the USA is involved in, should be encouraged. These new initiatives include the “Gleneagles Plan of Action on clean energy, climate change and sustainable development”, the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, and the hydrogen and methane partnerships. UNEP is actively involved in the implementation of response measures to climate change by assisting developing countries in various fields such as capacity-building, adaptation, mitigation and public awareness.
further endangering food security-,
sea-level rise
and the accelerated erosion of coastal zones,
increasing intensity of natural disasters,
species extinction and
the spread of vector-borne diseases.
Climate Change Outreach Programme
Responding to the needs of the countries and following the request from the UNFCCC Secretariat, UNEP/DEC has initiated and implemented a major programme on climate change outreach that directly supported the UNFCCC New Delhi Work Programme on Article 6 (Education, Training and Public Awareness) The objectives of this project are to provide to governments additional tools for promoting climate change awareness at the national level. Support efforts by associations and NGOs to provide accurate and accessible messages of IPCC on climate change to their memberships or target audiences, make the youth more aware of the climate change implications and motivated to take relevant climate friendly actions, and raise awareness of general public on climate change problems with easily understandable graphic materials. Project partners include the Governments of Kenya, Ghana , Namibia , Russia , Uzbekistan , Mexico , Albania , Georgia, the UNFCCC and IPCC Secretariats, WWF, TERI, the Government of Norway and other donors.
National Climate Outreach Campaigns
Those campaigns have been implemented in Namibia , Ghana , Kenya , Russia , Uzbekistan , Albania and Georgia . Each campaign identified local needs and priorities for implementing national-level Article 6 activities, promoted collaboration and networking among focal points and key stakeholders, produced popular brochures and booklets in local languages, organized radio and TV presentations on hot climate topics – and much more. In Latin America UNEP/DEC supported publication of a Handbook on Climate Change Communica-tions for local practitioners that was successfully tested at a regional workshop with participants from 10 countries of the region.
Climate Outreach to Youth
UNEP has entered into a partnership with TERI Institute ( India ) to promote environmental education among the school children in India . This programme covered more than 100 schools in 8 states of the country and featured establishing school climate clubs, workshops and seminars for children, arranging climate-related shows and presentations and compiling guide books on climate change for teachers.
Support to UNFCCC Regional Workshops on Article 6
To facilitate successful implementation of New Delhi Work Programme, UNFCCC Secretariat organizes workshops on Article 6 for various geographical regions where representatives of local countries discuss common problems of climate change outreach identify barriers to strengthening Article 6 activities and explore opportunities and strategies for overcoming these barriers. UNEP co-sponsored and co-organized regional workshop for Africa , Latin America and the Caribbean , and for Asia-Pacific, and also organized a similar workshop for countries of the former Soviet Union .
Adapting to Climate Change
UNEP and the Inter-Centre Working Group on Climate Change of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) have proposed a joint project on improving the science-policy link. UNEP is also supporting the development of criteria and indicators for assessing ecological and economic vulnerabilities to climate change and capacities for adapting at the regional level. Many of these criteria and indicators relate to key sectors for biodiversity, agriculture and water. UNEP is also developing a handbook on cost-effective adaptation strategies for agricultural productivity for main-streaming adaptation in agriculture. Through its GEF-funded project on the Assessment of Impacts of and Adaptation to Climate Change in Multiple Regions and Sectors, UNEP is enhancing scientific and technical capacities in over 45 countries, mostly in Africa .
Supporting the IPCC
UNEP together with WMO provides the joint secretariat support to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its bureau and working groups, including facilitating the participation of developing countries and countries with economies in transition in IPCC.The IPCC has three Working Groups and a Task Force:
Working Group I assesses the scientific aspects of the climate system and climate change.
Working Group II assesses the vulnerability of socio-economic and natural systems to climate change, negative and positive consequences of climate change, and options for adapting to it.
Working Group III assesses options for limiting greenhouse gas emissions and otherwise mitigating climate change.
The Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories is responsible for the IPCC National Greenhouse Gas Inventories Programme.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports and supporting materials
Future Perspectives
The eleventh Conference of the Parties to the Convention (COP-11) and the first Meeting of the Par-ties to the Protocol (COP/MOP-1) Montreal in December 2005, launched two parallel tracks for future global action addressing climate change. First, an open-ended ad-hoc working group, established under the Protocol, and second, a non-negotiating “dialogue on long-term cooperative action” was initiated under the Convention. UNEP will support both tracks agreed in Montreal for the follow-up process. Hopefully the two tracks will eventually (after 2008) converge and lead to a new set of legally binding measures. At this stage, only the Kyoto track is clearly on course for binding targets. The centrality of multilateral framework represented by UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol needs to be fully supported. However, all other initiatives that help in anyway to address this challenge, including those initiatives the USA is involved in, should be encouraged. These new initiatives include the “Gleneagles Plan of Action on clean energy, climate change and sustainable development”, the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, and the hydrogen and methane partnerships. UNEP is actively involved in the implementation of response measures to climate change by assisting developing countries in various fields such as capacity-building, adaptation, mitigation and public awareness.
UN-HABITAT
UN-HABITAT runs two major worldwide campaigns – the Global Campaign on Urban Governance, and the Global Campaign for Secure Tenure.
UN-HABITAT/World Bank slum upgrading initiative called the Cities Alliance, promoting effective housing development policies and strategies, helping develop and campaigning for housing rights, promoting sustainable cities and urban environmental planning and management, post-conflict land-management and reconstruction in countries devastated by war or natural disasters. Others take in water and sanitation and solid waste management for towns and cities, training and capacity building for local leaders, ensuring that women’s rights and gender issues are brought into urban development and management policies, helping fight crime through UN-HABITAT’s Safer Cities Programme, research and monitoring of urban economic development, employment, poverty reduction, municipal and housing finance systems, and urban investment. It also helps strengthen rural-urban linkages, and infrastructure development and public service delivery.
UN-HABITAT also has some 154 technical programmes and projects in 61 countries around the world, most of them in the least developed countries. These include major projects in post-war societies such as Afghanistan, Kosovo, Somalia, Iraq, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, to name a few. The agency’s operational activities help governments create policies and strategies aimed at strengthening a self-reliant management capacity at both national and local levels. They focus on promoting shelter for all, improving urban governance, reducing urban poverty, improving the living environment and managing disaster mitigation and post-conflict rehabilitation
UN-HABITAT/World Bank slum upgrading initiative called the Cities Alliance, promoting effective housing development policies and strategies, helping develop and campaigning for housing rights, promoting sustainable cities and urban environmental planning and management, post-conflict land-management and reconstruction in countries devastated by war or natural disasters. Others take in water and sanitation and solid waste management for towns and cities, training and capacity building for local leaders, ensuring that women’s rights and gender issues are brought into urban development and management policies, helping fight crime through UN-HABITAT’s Safer Cities Programme, research and monitoring of urban economic development, employment, poverty reduction, municipal and housing finance systems, and urban investment. It also helps strengthen rural-urban linkages, and infrastructure development and public service delivery.
UN-HABITAT also has some 154 technical programmes and projects in 61 countries around the world, most of them in the least developed countries. These include major projects in post-war societies such as Afghanistan, Kosovo, Somalia, Iraq, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, to name a few. The agency’s operational activities help governments create policies and strategies aimed at strengthening a self-reliant management capacity at both national and local levels. They focus on promoting shelter for all, improving urban governance, reducing urban poverty, improving the living environment and managing disaster mitigation and post-conflict rehabilitation
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