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Greetings from GPF!
This week we launched the new "Globalization" section of the GPF web site. You can access this section directly from our home page by clicking on the new globalization button. The section is organized into several themes such as economics, politics, culture, and citizen movements. It contains more than fifty articles and offers an extensive listing of both bibliographical and electronic resources. Congratulations are due to Ben Holt of Brown University for his work in developing this important new resource.
On Monday, July 12, the NGO Working Group on the Security Council met with the new permanent representative of Brazil to the UN, Amb. Gelson Fonseca, who arrived at the UN only four weeks ago, taking over from our friend, the much-respected Ambassador Celso Amorim. Amb. Fonseca began his briefing with a general perspective on the UN System and the Security Council. The discussion with NGO representatives explored the dilemmas of the Council as a multilateral institution in the present world, but the ambassador expressed the hope that after a period in which multilateralism has lost ground, the UN appears to have very recently returned to a more important and active role.
Also on Monday, July 12, three representatives from Global Policy Forum attended the launch of the Human Development Report 1999 at the offices of Oxford University Press. A press conference (one of almost a hundred in different locations around the world) was followed by a luncheon in the atrium of the press offices on Madison Avenue and 33rd Street. This year's report focuses on globalization. In addition to discussing the advantages of globalization, the report looks at the unbalanced distribution of benefits. It points out, for instance, that the global race for knowledge leaves poorer populations further behind than ever, since only upper-income sectors of developed nations enjoy widespread access to the internet. The report concludes that growing inequality, interdependence and threats to human security require "globalization with a human face". It calls for "reinventing global governance" so that human development can assume predominance over purely market priorities.
"Reinventing global governance" is just the latest jargon for "strengthening global institutions" like the UN, a goal sought for hundreds of years by visionaries in the peace movement. This week, we are happy to post a research paper written by Grace Roosevelt, a GPF volunteer this past spring. The paper, entitled "A Brief History of the Quest for Peace," provides a clear summary of European ideas on international peace during the past five centuries. The paper helps to situate the UN as a product of a long and ongoing search for a peaceful world.
Peace in Africa may have moved slightly closer this week. The parties to the conflict in Sierra Leone signed a peace agreement and there was also a cease-fire in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The DRC agreement remains in doubt, however, because it does not include rebel forces from Uganda and Rwanda which collaborate with the DRC government. At the UN, big questions remain as to the role of the organization in stabilizing the peace and moving towards disarmament, economic prosperity and democratic rule. Most members of the Security Council would like to send a major peacekeeping force to the DRC, as proposed by the Secretary General, but there is doubt that the United States will agree to the additional costs that this operation will entail.
Money may be short at the UN, but it is long in the pockets of the diamond industry, prospering in the midst of Africa's civil wars. This week, as Canada's Ambassador Robert Fowler continues his effort to enforce the Security Council sanctions on UNITA diamond sales in Angola, we post two analyses that point to the link of diamonds and conflict in African states. A diamond mining company has been accused of exporting military equipment and helicopters to Sierra Leone last year during the UN arms embargo. In Angola, DRC and Sierra Leone alike, diamond sales have been critical in financing weapons purchases and fueling the civil wars. Diamond companies have been engaged in direct and bloody competitition for control over diamond production rights. GPF will continue to follow this issue closely and to press for more effective international oversight over diamonds, oil and the other resources that lie at the heart of inhumane conflicts worldwide.