High level Panel on threats, challenges and change – reform of the United Nations

Something for every one!

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan brought together 16 eminent and experienced people to advise him on a broad framework for collective security in the world, and on the role a new and refashioned United Nations could play in ensuring a better life in the 21st century. The report was presented to the Secretary-General on 2 December 2004, and according to him, the report was of great range and depth that even “surpassed his expectations”.

The report with 101 recommendations will certainly dominate the international agenda, at least until September 2005, when a summit of world leaders will meet in New York to consider it in the context of the review of the Millennium Declaration by the General Assembly. The Secretary-General himself will give his views on the report in March 2005, also in context of the implementation of the objectives of the Millennium Declaration adopted four years ago. This will help focus the attention of world leaders on promises they may have made earlier and which was not kept. It is clear that the Millennium Declaration objectives are behind schedule.

It is expected that member States of the United Nations will also consider the panel’s recommendations in preparation for the participation of the Heads of States and Governments in the summit next September in New York. The report of the Panel is so detailed that it would not be too difficult for the individual countries to emphasise those recommendations they like and are compatible with their national strategies. This will certainly be true in the case of the recommendations on the Security Council, on which even the 16 members of the Panel themselves could not agree on one option, and therefore the Panel put forward two recommendations rather than one.

The latest in a series

During a presentation I made recently on Malta to, the United Nations and the European Union about the Standing Committee on Foreign and European Affairs of the Parliament of Malta, I pointed out that reform of the United Nations has been a topic in the organisation since its beginnings. It therefore comes as no surprise that the present Panel’s report is the latest in a series of efforts to reform the United Nations. This should not however, in any way detract from its significance and importance. Reform has always been a priority for every Secretary-General of the United Nations and certainly for member States, particularly those who finance the bulk of the budget of the organisation. Usually, reform efforts were undertaken at three levels – at the level of the Secretariat, at the inter-governmental level and at the level of eminent persons like the present report.

Soon after being appointed Secretary-General, Kofi Annan issued a comprehensive report in July 1997, entitled, “Renewing the United Nations: A programme of Reform”. The 1990s also saw an impressive number of proposals including those of some of the ad hoc committees on United Nations reform under the Presidents of the General Assembly. “The Agenda for Peace” and “The Agenda for Development” also wrestled with the theme of UN reform in various areas of work of the organisation.

During the decade before, that is, in the 1980s one had the reports of the Palme Commission and the Bruntland Commission. An eminent Group of 18 gave us a report entitled “Report of the Group of High-Level Intergovernmental Experts to Review the Efficiency of the Administrative and Financial Functioning of the United Nations” in August 1986.

Secretaries-General Boutros-Ghali and Perez de-Cuellar also had their own proposals to reform the organisation. In addition there were numerous other reports by individuals, organisations and governments. The report of the present Panel is the latest in a series, and hopefully, will be the one that will make a difference.

Significance and importance of the report

Faced with the inability to do anything in a number of civil wars in Africa and the genocide in Rwanda, and being ignored in the cases of Kosovo and Iraq, the United Nations’ credibility is at the lowest it has ever been since its founding in 1945. The report of the Panel therefore could not have come at a better time for the United Nations, and for the role it may play in the future, in a more secure world.

Introducing the report, the chairman of the Panel, a former Prime Minister of Thailand, said that the report puts forward, “… a new vision of collective security, one that addresses all the major threats to international peace and security felt around the world”. The report reaffirmed the right of States to self-defence, including pre-emptively when an attack is imminent. In the case of “nightmare scenarios” involving terrorists and weapons of mass destruction, the Security Council may have to act earlier and more proactively than in the past.

The strength of the report has to be in the new and fresh analysis of the inter-relationship of the forces that unleash threats, challenges and change and how to mitigate the effect of these forces on the peoples of the world, particularly the poorest of the poor who usually suffer the brunt of major calamities. The report leaves little doubt that, “… in the age of global commerce, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction – a threat to any nation or people is a threat to all, and that nations must work together to maintain their security”. While stressing the need for collective security, the report says that sovereign States, “… are still the frontline responders to today’s threats”, and need to be better equipped, “… to exercise their sovereignty responsibly”.

On United Nations reform, one finds little new material that has not already been included in the Secretary-General’s own reform efforts and in previous reports and recommendations, some of which were mentioned above.

The recommendations

The recommendations address some of the most controversial global issues, such as when the use of force is justified, the definition of terrorism and other complicated issues that the United Nations has been struggling with from its beginning, like efforts to combat poverty and disease.

The first 69 of the 101 recommendations deal with poverty, infectious disease, environmental degradation, conflict between and among States, nuclear, radiological, chemical and biological weapons, terrorism, trans-national organised crime, the role of sanctions, use of force, peace enforcement and peacekeeping, post conflict peace-building and protecting civilians.

The last 31 recommendations deal with the reform of the United Nations, more specifically with the General Assembly, the Security Council, the establishment of a Peace-building Commission, the cooperation with regional organisations, the Economic and Social Council, the Commission on Human Rights, the Secretariat and the Charter of the United Nations.

Reform of the United Nations

As already stated, this is not the strongest part of the report. With the exception perhaps of the proposal for a peace-building Commission, most of the recommendations are not new, and most have already been made earlier, some by the Secretary-General himself. The strengthening of the General Assembly, which to most makes a lot of sense, does not seem to be compatible with some other proposals of the Panel on the other main organs of the Assembly, namely eliminating the Trusteeship Council and clipping the wings of ECOSOC.

Reform proposals for the Security Council continue to be controversial and it is no surprise that the Panel could not come up with a unified proposal for a more effective and relevant Council. Unless one finds a solution to the question of the veto, irrespective of the number of members, there are always going to be two distinct classes of members, namely those who can stop by a single vote any action in the Council from going forward and those who cannot. The ball is, therefore, back in the court of the member States, which does not auger well for a solution to this problem. This is particularly important since the Panel centres its major recommendations on an effective and relevant Security Council. One should not give the impression that there is an easy way out of this dilemma, but one should continue to look for options that reflect more the present geo-political realities. The system of “indicative voting” proposed by the Panel may be difficult to implement. But a system of “weighted voting” as used in the Council of the European Union could lead to some new possibilities.

The Panel gives much importance to the co-operation of the United Nations with regional organisations. Malta had recognised this earlier and proposed that the CSCE, later OSCE, be declared the regional arrangement in terms of Chapter VIII of the United Nations Charter. The Panel does not refer to this but gives the co-operation with Nato as an example.

Finally the Panel lightly dismisses the Trusteeship Council and calls for its “deletion”. The reason given was that the United Nations should turn its back on any attempt to return to the mentalities and forms of colonialism. This, I think, is slightly unfair, since especially the newly proposed Peace-building Commission has a mandate that is rather close to the reformed Trusteeship Council as proposed by Malta some time ago.

Malta and the European Union

In a speech in Brussels on 8 December 2004, the Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy, made the first remarks on behalf of the EU on the Panel’s report. Mrs Benita Ferrero-Waldner gave her initial thoughts on the Panel’s recommendations on the Political and Security Dimension, the Economic and Social Dimension and the Institutional Dimension and supported the United Nations, which she said was at the heart of multilateralism that the EU espoused. Without going into details she said, among other things, that the EU should have a seat in the Security Council and welcomed the common definition of terrorism.

The Prime Minister of Malta, Dr Lawrence Gonzi also took little time to refer to the Panel’s report, when he exchanged New Year greetings with the diplomats accredited to Malta. He said, that, “… over the past months the United Nations’ Secretary-General had taken a far-sighted initiative to focus attention on how best to exploit the still untapped potential for collective security and cooperation. Malta was deeply committed to the processes of multilateralism in the conduct of international relations”.

Malta, I am sure, would continue to play its role with respect to contributing to this process of United Nations reform, by developing its own positions and policies on this important topic and by participating in the development of the positions and policies of the European Union.

Dr Michael Bartolo is a former Ambassador of Malta to the United Nations, WTO and the Specialised Agencies in Geneva and is currently Chairman, of the Appeals Board of the World Intellectual Property Organisation.