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GPF List-Serv
June 18 - 22, 2001
Greetings from Global Policy Forum!
Security Council Weekly Recap
This week was one of mixed successes for the Security Council. Upon returning from its historic mission to the Balkans, the Council issued an optimistic report on the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). The UN-administered Kosovo Police Service has been particularly successful. The report also details the preparations that are underway for Kosovo-wide elections on 17 November. Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica issued a statement supporting the elections, but the Council is still worried about Kosovo Serb participation. Considering the lack of progress on the return of Kosovo Serbs to the region, the prospect of building a multiethnic Kosovo appears bleak.
The Iraq question continues to divide the Permanent Members (P5) of the Council. After another week of intensive negotiations, the P5 remain at odds on important issues, including the controversial "Goods Review List". The new resolution would prevent Iraq from importing numerous "dual-use" items (i.e., items that have both a civilian and military use). The list of dual-use goods in the US-UK draft resolution is more than 30 pages long, but France has stressed the importance of making the list as short as possible. France's proposed list is only 7 pages. Next week will bring another twist to this ongoing saga. In response to a request by Russia to make the Iraq debates more transparent, the Council will hold a public meeting on 26 June. It will mark the first time to our knowledge in recent years that the Council has debated Iraq sanctions in an open setting prior to an agreement by the P-5. We have links to the draft resolutions and goods list here: security/sanction/indexone.htm#drafts
Last week we posted a link to a report by Simon Chesterman, analysing "state building" and UN transitional administrations from West Papua to present. The report looks in detail at East Timor's vote for independence and the ensuing issues in creating a new East Timor. security/issues/etimindx.htm#chesterman
In Afghanistan, the UN World Food Program (WFP) reached an agreement with the ruling Taliban that will allow Afghani women to conduct surveys on behalf of the WFP. The WFP and the Taliban had quarreled over this issue for nearly a year, but the Taliban ultimately caved in to WFP demands after the WFP threatened to shut down its bakeries in the Afghani capital. Until this agreement, relations between the Taliban and the UN had been constantly declining.
The WFP was also busy in Angola this week; it resumed flights to Angola, despite being unable to reach an agreement with the Unita rebels of Jonas Savimbi. Last weekend, Unita rebels fired at a WFP cargo plane that was transporting food to the town of Kuito. More than 200,000 in the region depend on WFP aid for subsistence, but Unita maintains that the humanitarian cargo plane was a "legitimate target."
International Justice
This week the BBC aired a documentary accusing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of actively participating in the 1982 massacre of Palestinians in Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in Lebanon. The incident took place during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and just after Israeli forces took control of the Beirut area. According to the program , Sharon knew that if he allowed Phalangist militia into the Palestinian refugee camps they would slaughter innocent civilians who he had a legal duty to protect from harm.
Just days after the program was aired, twenty-eight survivors of the Sabra and Chatila massacre charged Ariel Sharon with crimes against humanity in a Belgian Court. In response, the Belgian government said it was embarrassed by the charges and would work to tighten war crimes legislation to prevent such charges from being brought in the future. Belgium assumes Presidency of the European Union this month and as such does not want to antagonize Israel as the EU seeks to play its own, independent role in the conflict.
The EU has taken steps towards defining a separate role from the United States in the conflict. A dozen EU observers have been sent to territories under the control of the Palestinian Authority, a step that Israel opposes but could not prevent. The EU has also tightened rules on trade with Israel, as a way of bringing pressure for concessions to the Palestinians. The BBC program must be seen as emerging from these new European attitudes.
In Rwanda, two former mayors wanted on charges of involvement in the 1994 genocide have been arrested in a Tanzania refugee camp at the request of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. At the trial of Hassan Ngeze a witness testified that as he lay in hiding in a friend's home that was being searched by the Hutu militia, he overheard Ngeze say to the owner, "Do you know that the power of God has ended? We now have the power over life and death."
In Yugoslavia, the recent discovery of three mass graves filled with the corpses of ethnic Albanians has shifted public opinion in favor of extradition of Milosevic to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Failure to extradite Milosevic might have resulted in Yugoslavia losing millions of dollars of funding at an upcoming donor's conference.
Despite all this, President Kostunica was unable to gain the support of a majority of the Yugoslav federal parliament to pass a law that would allow extradition of Yugoslav subjects to the Hague. Kostunica withdrew the bill. Desperate to show the US he is eager to cooperate with the Hague, Kostunica reported there was a helicopter outside the jail where Milosevic is now confined, waiting to take him to the Hague when the law is passed. Kostunica now plans fly Milosovic off to the tribunal with or without parliament's backing, by having the justice ministry issue a decree allowing extradition.
Milosevic, who is believed to be an atheist, has met with a member of the Orthodox Church and received a copy of the New Testament.
NGOs and Global Protests
With the WTO holding its upcoming meeting in Qatar where protesters will be effectively banned from entering the country, the Bretton Woods institutions are themselves looking for "offshore" locations far from the unruly public. The World Bank has decided to hold its annual conference on development economics in cyberspace! However, this decision will likely backfire - anti-globalization lobbyists have announced virtual attacks and cyber protests. Using well-known techniques, protesters can directly interrupt the conference process and make a much more powerful statement than through 'conventional' protests.
We have posted an article by Michael Massing, who looks at the impact of long-term projects instead of event-oriented protests. NGOs that are part of the globalization-reform movement have carried out fair trade campaigns and sweatshop boycotts - yet the nature of the world market has essentially remained the same. NGOs, he argues, should address their activities to national governments, because only they can press for global regulations. But what if these governments are under pressure from global markets and institutions like the IMF? This is the dilemma of the purely national path to global democracy.
Nations and States
An article by Nigel Morris-Cotterill analyzes money laundering. In his view, there is no point putting the blame for illegal financial activities on small "offshore" centers with minimal regulatins. Money laundering can take place anywhere, and it is precisely the differences between countries that criminals take advantage of.
Illegal activity is not easy to define - a practice that is legal in one country may be illegal in another. Therefore nations have to negotiate an international framework for financial flows. Countries that are blacklisted for money laundering have promised to reform their laws, but without a concerted international effort this will only improve their image and not the overall situation.
Lucy Komisar, in her article "After Dirty Air, Dirty Money" shows that the US and major European money centers have more responsibility than the so-called 'tax havens.' The Bush administration, by pulling out of the OECD initiatives to clean up money laundering has capitulated to the big financial institutions, who prefer minimal regulations.
Social and Economic Policy
In anticipation of next week's UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS, various discussions on the issue have occupied the UN agencies, Bretton Woods Institutions, national parliaments, as well as private organizations. Early this week, East African Aids activists celebrated as Kenya became the second country in Sub-Saharan Africa to pass laws allowing parallel imports and compulsory licensing of inexpensive anti-retroviral drugs. The new legal procedure offers hope to the 2.2 million AIDS sufferers in Kenya who are unable to afford the life-saving therapies. Simultaneously, the pharmaceutical multinationals and their opponents are ready to resume the battle at the WTO in Geneva. The WTO's African members claim that the WTO's accord on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS) is facing a "crisis of legitimacy." The question of the high price of life-saving drugs in poor countries has heated up debates among activists and intellectuals.
The HIV/AIDS concern does not simply stem from the matter of patent protection for drugs but also other critical issues such as human rights violations and gender inequality. UNIFEM called on world leaders to make women's role central in the fight against HIV/AIDS. UNIFEM Executive Director Noeleen Heyzer drew attention to the fact that there is a direct correlation between women's low status, the violation of their human rights, and HIV transmission. Human Rights Watch also charged several government delegates, including those of the United States, Egypt, Libya, and the Vatican, for their attempt to delete from the draft declaration of the UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS any mention of high-risk, high-transmission activities such as men having sex with men, sex workers having sex with their clients, and injecting drug users having sex with others.
And now for this week's links:
