Governance and the United Nations

First National Conference of Student Pugwash UK

Wadham College, Oxford: 2001-12-19

During the last ten years the image of the United Nations has changed like a tragi-comedy mask. At one moment it is all smiles. Next it is a grimace. With the ending of the cold war and the successful expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait under UN auspices, the United Nations seemed the best hope for the future of orderly international relations within the framework of law. By 1995 it had become associated with political misjudgement and administrative incompetence.

How did this happen? Has the United Nations, like any other organism, been evolving in the right direction, or evolving at all? Why has so little happened to give effect to the previous Secretary-General's ideas about preventive diplomacy, peace making and peace keeping set out in his paper of June 1992? Was the United Nations really to blame for such events as the havoc created by civil war in Yugoslavia? Why have so many countries still failed to honour their obligations to the United Nations, and give it the resources it needs? In short why is it, in the words of Boutros Boutros Ghali, that the reach of the United Nations has so far exceeded its grasp?

Before trying to answer these questions, we need to look at the United Nations as the most recent expression of repeated efforts to establish mechanisms for maintenance of international order. Big wars usually breed big attempts to create new mechanisms. Thus was born the League of Nations after the First World War, and the United Nations after the Second. Perhaps inevitably such mechanisms tend to be consecrations of the status quo. Such was the case in 1945 with the device of a Security Council whose Five Permanent Members were the victors in the war, and whose task was seen as guardianship of the world which had emerged from it.

In the half century which has followed, the United Nations has survived extraordinary changes in international relationships, and adapted itself pretty well in the process. It has survived, albeit at high cost, the East-West polarity created by the hostile coalitions led by the United States and the Soviet Union. It has survived the North-South polarity created by the break-up of the old colonial empires and a vast increase in its membership: many of the new members see the United Nations less as a guardian of the status quo than as an agent of change to put right inequities between states. It has survived the changes brought about by the end of the cold war which, like the end of the ice age, revealed international landscapes riven by geological pressures and faults which had long lain hidden beneath the ice. Finally it has survived the current changes not only between nation states but within their frontiers, and thereby found itself drawn into disputes where it had no clear mandate under the Charter.

Perspective as British Permanent Representative

I was the witness of five main changes, or groups of changes during my time as British Permanent Representative between May 1987 and September 1990. First and most obvious were the changes in attitude caused by the ending of the cold war. The process was astonishingly rapid. Suddenly Permanent Representatives were able to talk to each other with a measure of common understanding and purpose. This was particularly so within the Security Council and among the Five Permanent Members who found themselves at last able to fulfil most of the role given them under the Charter. New combinations developed among them: on some issues I found myself closer to our former adversaries than our friends. I was the informal chairman of the Five for almost two years. Some of our first essays in the management of crises took place in my apartment looking over the East River.

I was also the witness of the general replacement of confrontation by co-operation among the vast majority of United Nations members. The arguments between rich and poor, between so-called developed and so-called developing countries, over such notions as new world economic orders or new world information orders had long proved sterile. Those who sang hymns to development were rarely clear about what they thought development meant. Many of the underlying problems remained unresolved (and indeed have got worse since then). A new approach to them was - and is - clearly required.

At the same time I was the witness of a new willingness to contemplate the use of force in the name of the international community. There is no easy way to deal with the kingdoms of Caliban - the Hitlers, Saddam Husseins and other criminal mavericks such as Osama bin Laden - and each creates it own challenge to international order and ethics. A real test came in the reaction to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and the creation of the coalition under United Nations auspices to expel the Iraqis. This coalition was a classic example of the United Nations exerting the powers given it under the Charter.

Ten years on we have the global coalition against terrorism and the allegation is that the UN has been sidelined. This time we have a coalition which has agreed not to work against the United States as oppose to one actively working together. But such US dominance may be inevitable given that 11 September saw a direct attack on the United States itself. With the Berlin Conference on the future of Afghanistan, the United Nations has once again tried to come to the fore.

I was also the witness of the development of new attitudes towards national sovereignty, a political concept first given legal force by the United Nations Charter. So far respect for sovereignty has been a foundation stone of the United Nations and its various institutions. Those who have the least sovereignty are always keenest to protect it. But over the years recognition of the constraints on it has become general, and erosion of the practice if not of the concept of sovereignty is widespread. Generally states are no longer watertight - if they ever were - from international law and practice, the behaviour of the global economy, transnational business and financial activity, and, with the development of information technology, communications on a global scale.

Last I was the witness of - and a participant in - the process of drawing up a new agenda of points of global concern. Most now realize the dangers our little animal species has created for the good health of the planet, in particular the vertiginous increase in our numbers, pollution of land, water and air, consumption of resources in industrial countries, pressure on resources elsewhere, and destruction of other forms of life. I was a member of the ginger group which began the preparations for the United Nations Conference at Rio in 1992 (the first meetings of the group were in the British Mission). Other obvious points were new threats to human health, in particular AIDS, a vast increase in the numbers of refugees, and resurgence of ethnic and religious strife, the more assertive role of non-governmental organizations, and not least an increasing polarization of the world's rich and the world's poor.

Of course these changes as seen from the glass tower of the United Nations in New York were no more than a reflection of changes elsewhere. Others looking from another perspective may see them differently. But they were perhaps clearer to us than to others, and formed the basis of what, as Permanent Representatives, we were trying to do.

The United Nations Institutions

Obviously they had direct effects on the functioning of the main UN institutions. Within the General Assembly, which is the debating society of the world, there is more consensus, but also perhaps more unease. Most governments have yet to come to terms with change, and to see their way ahead. The economic side of the United Nations remains a Cinderella. Most of its original functions are discharged elsewhere in such bodies as the annual G8 summits, regional economic organizations, the OECD, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and some of the UN agencies. Protection of human rights is outside the formal sphere of UN responsibility. In this case there is a clash of cultures which remains unresolved.

Likewise work on disarmament within the United Nations has made little real progress. Arms control arrangements elsewhere have proved a more effective way forward. The scandal of the international arms trade continues unabated. Many of the poorer countries still have more soldiers than teachers. I sometimes wonder whether aid to such countries, whether bilateral or through UN agencies, should be linked to reductions in military expenditure.

On the more positive side such new institutions as the Commission on Sustainable Development, created as a result of the Rio Conference, have real potentialities. But if the bodies within the General Assembly family are to be effective and more efficient than in the past, then there must be a weeding out of the ones that no longer serve a useful purpose - and there are still many such - as well as the creation of new ones.

The Security Council is the most conspicuous institution of the United Nations system, and here the impact of change has been most evident. Working together, the Five Permanent Members were able to give leadership within the Council in bringing an eventual end to the war between Iran and Iraq, in promoting the independence of Namibia, in finding a settlement in Cambodia, and in creating the coalition which led to the expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait.

Obviously the Five cannot even pretend to rule the world. When they began to work together, the others felt a mixture of relief that they should be doing so with apprehension that they might be trying to form some five power directorate. But in the last few years neither the Five nor the Council as a whole have given consistent leadership, and have reverted to ambiguous resolutions and unwillingness to match means to ends. This was particularly evident over Somalia and former Yugoslavia.

This is why for many the Security Council has become a prime target for reform. The composition is certainly anomalous. Why should the victors of a war which ended 56 years ago enjoy a permanent place upon it and the right of veto? Yet we should be cautious in changing an institution which is - by and large and at last - discharging its original functions. The Permanent Members ensure continuity and stability. Their veto power has ensured that the Council remains a serious body and has not dwindled into yet another resolution-passing organization of no consequence.

It is hard to think of new and satisfactory criteria to govern permanent membership. Geographical area? Size of population? Gross National Product? Possession of nuclear weapons? Readiness to act, if necessary with military force, on behalf of the international community? Any choice bristles with difficulties. Would Pakistan and Bangladesh welcome India as a Permanent Member? Would Argentina and Mexico welcome Brazil? If the European Union replaced Britain and France, would it ever take any decisions? In my view the time for change will come only as part of wider institutional reform.

Of the United Nations institutions, perhaps the International Court of Justice has so far changed least. It is a pity that more countries have not yet accepted the compulsory jurisdiction of the Court, and made wider use of its facilities for resolving disputes between states. There are possibilities for developing the use of Chambers in which issues can be settled within ad hoc tribunals outside the glare of international publicity. Yet I believe that a new one to cover environmental disputes between states has not been used.

Finally there are the UN Agencies and Associated Bodies and Programmes (over 40 in number) which have already changed substantially over the years. They bring together technical expertise in dealing with global problems, from health to meteorology, and the best of them are indispensable. Obviously some have worked much better than others. UNCTAD (the UN Conference on Trade and Development) and UNIDO (the UN Industrial Development Organization) are ripe for abolition. There is overlapping. More and better co-ordination between the agencies is urgently needed. Here the governments represented on their governing Councils carry particular responsibility. They alone can control the UN barons. Yet after their representatives have been there for a while, they tend to speak for the Agency to which they are accredited rather than for their governments.

There are some encouraging signs. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are co-operating more closely with other UN institutions. The new Global Environment Facility of the World Bank already has a significant role. The work of the Agencies and Associated Bodies constitutes an important if still somewhat dispersed effort at global management of issues beyond the competence of nation states.

In my view the United Nations and its institutions suffer from four main handicaps:

• In spite of recent shortcomings, the UN system has almost excessive political credibility. Far more responsibility is loaded on it than it can possibly carry.
• Secondly the tasks it is given are often confused or imprecise, not least because member states themselves do not know how to cope with them.
• Thirdly it is not given the financial and other resources it needs to function effectively.
• Last it is not allowed to carry through necessary internal changes and reforms.

There is a curious and unbridged gap between the often repeated wish of governments, expressed in the Security Council, the General Assembly and elsewhere, for the United Nations to defend international order, fulfil its obligations under the Charter, and take on new responsibilities; and the means - political, financial and administrative - by which it could do so. Governments often blame the United Nations for failures. Some people in Washington have made it part of their political roadshow. More legitimately the United Nations blames governments.

The 1990s were not an easy time for governments. Even though many governments wanted or expected more of the United Nations, and accepted the substance of the new global agenda, most also wanted to hold on to their sovereignty - and money - as long as possible, and in some cases keep the United Nations from interfering in their affairs. The United Nations can thus be both a friend and an enemy.

Changes and Reform

The recent successes and failures of the United Nations have brought out the need to reform its structure. The fiftieth anniversary and the Millennium celebrations last year, helped put the issue back on the international agenda. Obviously the first requirement is for member states to make the United Nations work as it could and should. This does not mean only paying subscriptions in full and on time. It means giving the United Nations moral and public support.

Governments are not the only players. As national sovereignty has eroded, so a broad array of non-governmental organizations, including minorities, have sought to make their voices heard in international as in national affairs. This was particularly evident at the Rio Conference, and will be again at the Johannesburg Conference next year. But the United Nations still has to establish the means by which such organizations can express themselves from within the system rather than from outside it. This raises the interesting question of whether the United Nations should provide some means to establish whether governments are governing with the consent of the governed; and if not, and in the event of flagrant abuse of human rights, be entitled to intervene in the affairs of the offending member state.

Citizens thus have an important part to play. Thus, I greatly welcome the role of organisations such the International Student Pugwash and I wish the Student Pugwash UK every success with its endeavours for the future.

More generally I see a shift of loyalties and a switch of focus among people of many member states; upwards to international institutions to cope with the problems on the world agenda; downwards to local organizations and communities with identifiable local interests; and sideways in direct communication between individuals through television, email and other means, often focused on single issues, whether political, economic or environmental.

The Future of Governance and the United Nations

What of the future of governance and the United Nations? Two major global themes have emerged during the last twenty years. First is the increasing globalisation of world trade. This reflects the current dominant world view on economic growth. Second, and much more importantly, is the global threat to the natural services upon which we all rely. Your may think I am exaggerating. But I hope that many of you some will take time to read the remarkable statement published after a meeting of scientists in the four international global change research programmes at Amsterdam in July. There it stated squarely that:

• Human-driven changes to the Earth's land surface, oceans, coasts, atmosphere and biodiversity were "equal to some of the great forces of nature in their extent and impact….Global change is real and happening now".
• "Human activities have the potential to switch the Earth's System to alternative modes of operation that may prove irreversible and less hospitable to humans and other life… the Earth's System has moved well outside the range of the natural variability exhibited over the last half million years at least. The nature of changes now occurring simultaneously in the Earth's system, their magnitudes and rates of change are unprecedented. The Earth is currently operating in a no-analogue state".
• "The accelerating human transformation of the Earth's environment is not sustainable. Therefore the business-as-usual way of dealing with the Earth's System is not an option. It has to be replaced - as soon as possible - by deliberate strategies of management that sustain the Earth's environment while meeting social and economic development objectives".

The next major UN Summit will be the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in September next year. The Summit has three main purposes: to review the results of the 1992 Rio Conference on Environment and Development, to identify the gaps in the Rio process, and to look ahead at the prospects for sustainable development. The encompassing theme will be - or should be - how to exercise human responsibility for the state of the planet in our own interest as well as that of other creatures in the global ecosystem.

To achieve sustainable development we must strike a better balance between the often competing interests of trade and environment. Both are united in their need for a global approach with global rules for the future. But, how are our current crop of UN institutions equipped to achieve this vital task?

First, look at the rules governing free markets. The post war General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), recently succeeded by the World Trade Organization (WTO), can well be regarded as a prime engine of globalization. It is designed to commit all countries to participate in the global economy, and to seek redress for disputes on a fair and equal basis, building on the principles of non-discrimination, transparency and consensus. Its aim is to ensure that resources are used efficiently, advances in technology are widely spread, wealth is thereby generated world wide, and improved economic and social conditions follow.

At present there is no specific agreement within the WTO system to deal with the environment, but the environment has not of course been ignored. GATT Article XX contains some specific exemptions, although these have been narrowly construed in dispute settlement panels.

In addition, since the conclusion of the Uruguay Round agreements, there has been a Committee on Trade and Environment. It has not so far proved effective. The relationship between trade and environment issues remains significantly difficult, with different people speaking different language on each side. The protests in Seattle last year clearly demonstrate the suspicion with which the WTO is seen not only by environmentalists, but also by the poorer countries of the world generally. I have yet to study the small print of the agreement at Doha a few weeks ago but by all accounts it is unlikely to make much practical difference.

Next I turn to the underlying problems of the environment. Without going into the detailed history, growth in environmental institutions since the Stockholm conference on the Environment of 1972 has been rapid. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has a mandate to be the global authority on environmental issues. Among UN institutions, UNEP is weakened by its dependence on voluntary funding. But there is a rich variety of Multilateral Environmental Agreements, governing such issues as long range boundary pollution, marine problems through the Law of the Sea, protection of the ozone layer, and (since the Rio Conference on Environment and Development of 1992), climate change, biological diversity, and desertification, each with its own secretariat. But these agreements have been well described as, " more of a crowd than a regiment". Coordination between them has been minimal. Then there is the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, the UN Economic and Social Council, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the Global Environment Facility, and the World Bank.

It is no wonder that with the dispersal of these organizations to different parts of the world, and their different hierarchies of reference and accountability, there should be fragmentation of the environmental case, confusion in deciding who should be responsible for what, and ineffectiveness in dealing with trade and investment issues.

In May 1998 the new Executive Director of UNEP reported to the UN Secretary General in some despair about the long-term prospects. Various ideas have since come forward: for example to create an Environment Management Group for the United Nations alongside the existing Administrative Committee on Co-ordination; or to set up a Global Ministerial Environment Forum (which in fact met in May 2000); or to revamp the UN Trusteeship Council and, as suggested by the UN Secretary General in 1997, to turn it into a Council for the planetary environment. So far virtually nothing has happened. Many, like me believe, on the basis of experience in UN-institution building, that none of these institutions can possibly manage the problems of co-ordination, and measures to cope with conflicts which may arise in the future.

Conflicts Between Trade and Environment

The risks of conflict are obvious. They are as much within different branches of national governments as they are between different members of the UN family. It can be argued - and has been argued - that the 200 or so Multilateral Environmental Agreements are obstacles to trade.

There are many WTO rulings which can be held to sacrifice national legislation, consumer wishes, protection of the environment and sustainability in general to the demands of the global market expressed through the WTO. For example: Europeans are legally required to import US hormone treated beef and the US Environmental Protection Agency has had to lower air quality standards to allow imports of reconstituted petrol. Long vistas of new argument are now opening up on trade involving genetically modified organisms. There are equally serious problems arising from the intellectual or other property rights of indigenous peoples over their biological resources.

Solutions

What then should be done? It is clear to the least observer that the current international arrangements for dealing with global environmental issues are not only defective but seriously lopsided. Indeed at present it seems that our current set of institutions can make the problems worse rather than better.

The world is not short of prescriptions for what might be done. Let me try and categorize them:

• some think that we should simply try and muddle through, and hope that conflicts and interest can be resolved on an ad hoc basis.
• There are others who believe that the best tactic is to bring about change within the WTO, and in particular to give its Trade and Environment Committee real powers. But although the importance of the environment was recognised at Doha, the meeting did not lay the foundation for real change.
• At the special meeting of the UN General Assembly of 1997, Chancellor Kohl of Germany, with the other heads of Government of Brazil, South Africa and Singapore, proposed the creation of what would amount to a World Environment Organization, and since then President Chirac has expressed similar views.
• The idea has been followed up in a by a number of people. On 15 March 1999 the outgoing Director General of the WTO said that:

  "if we want to strengthen the bridge between trade and the environment then this bridge needs two pillars…we need a similar multilateral rules-based system for the environment - a World Environment Organization to .... be the institutional and legal counterpart to the World Trade Organization".

Most governments, including the British, have reacted with caution. It is always time-consuming to secure institutional change in the UN system, and institutional reform can divert attention from other current issues. It would also of course be necessary to work out the relationship of any new institution with the WTO which should be seen as a partner rather than an adversary. Beneath the umbrella of a World Environmental Organization or sustainability could come the family of multilateral environmental institutions, and it could have a special relationship with such other bodies as the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility. It would eliminate much over-lapping, and probably save a lot of money.

The most obvious opportunity to improve the institutional balance between trade and the environment will be at the World Summit in Johannesburg next year. In June this year I co-chaired the Regional Round Table of Eminent Persons for Europe and North America as part of the complex build up to the Johannesburg Summit. The creation of some new over-arching institution was among our main recommendations. The Regional Roundtable for Central and South Asia also called for stronger institutions to support sustainable development.

But whether anything practical will emerge from the complex and burdensome preparatory process for the summit remains to be seen. The preparations for Johannesburg have become so elaborate and so subject to politics that their sheer complexity may make the summit almost unworkable. The result could all too easily be a collection of rhetorical statements so qualified as to make real action remote. In this case a real opportunity would have been missed.

Conclusions

After the end of the war over Kuwait, there was much talk of a new world order. I doubt if that was the right phrase. If anything the future could be less ordered as the structures built into East-West rivalries and North-South contentions collapse further and the global environmental crisis grows. Politics remains far behind technology in the governance of a global civil society.

At present the United Nations is more than the sum of its parts. But only just. Whether it can provide the leadership needed to move us from business-as-usual to a sustainable future society is doubtful. It is true that if it ceased to exist, it would have to be reinvented. But it is still primarily a jousting ground for governments, beset by vested economic interests, each trying to get more out of it than it puts in.

But in these difficult times it is important that we should hold on to the uplifting idea of the United Nations as the magic world in which humankind is one. Here symbols are vital. Seen from space as a passenger in the solar system, the earth is a tiny bright dot, or from closer to it, the blue water world. No matter that the myth does not always correspond with the reality, nor that its principles and standards are not always observed. The truth behind any set of myths, principles and standards is acceptance of aspirations held in common. That is the ultimate strength of the United Nations.