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GPF List-Serv
October 25 - 29, 1999
On Monday, October 25, the Security Council passed a resolution approving a major peacekeeping force for East Timor. Numbering some 11,000, the force includes over 9,000 soldiers, as well as police and civilian administrators. This is the largest peacekeeping operation in some time. It will probably remain in place for 2-3 years and cost about $1 billion per year in peacekeeping assessments. The new force will replace the Multinational Force, led by Australia, that has been in East Timor for the past month. The MNF, though approved by the Security Council, was organized separately from the UN and financed largely by the participant countries, not by UN assessments.
The Timor resolution followed closely a resolution authorizing 6,000 peacekeepers for Sierra Leone, voted by the Council on Friday, October 22. That force will cost hundreds of millions of dollars and could be in place for a year or more. The Council is also considering a third, even larger peacekeeping operation for the Democratic Republic of Congo. So it appears that the Council is finding its strength, purpose and unity again, a welcome change so soon after the Kosovo conflict, when doomsayers predicted that the Security Council was "finished" amid permanent deadlock. At GPF, we expected the Council to rebound, but it has revived more quickly and actively than we might have predicted.
We wonder, though, how the resulting dramatic increase in peacekeeping costs will affect the UN's financial crisis. The two new operations could triple the level of peacekeeping spending, now well under a $1 billion annually. Obviously, the United States has assented to these two expensive resolutions by withholding its veto. But will Washington eventually pay such large new bills, when it hasn't paid the more modest tabs now being assessed? While we welcome the Council's purposeful action, we are fearful that the UN's already shaky finances will deteriorate still further a few months down the road.
On Tuesday, October 26, the President of the International Court of Justice, Judge Stephen M. Schwebel, spoke about the financial crisis when he addressed the UN General Assembly. Presenting the World Court's annual report, he pointed to a dramatic increase in the Court's case load in the past year, an increase he interprets positively, as nations chose litigation over hostilities. He informed the GA that, unfortunately, the Court is on such a tight budget (it gets its funds from the UN) it is unable to pay for timely translations or for clerks to help the judges. So the Court will have difficulty responding to its 18 new contentious cases. Schwebel, a US national, spoke bluntly about the legal implications of the financial crisis. "Failure to meet the obligation [to pay assessments] not only has the gravest effects on the life of the Organization," he said, "it transgresses the principles . . . which are at the heart of international law." For an ICJ press release and the full text of the speech, see the links below.
With Judge Schwebel's words still ringing in our ears, we obtained the latest UN financial information, dated September 30. We noticed that Japan had at last paid its large outstanding 1999 balance to the regular budget -- the latest date it has settled up since GPF started keeping track in 1992. The Japanese action shifted the proportion of UN indebtedness sharply towards Washington. According to our calculations, the United States now owes 81% of all outstanding regular budget arrears - four times more than all other member states combined.
Not only does the financial crisis block the UN's core work, it also prevents urgently-needed maintainance to the UN's buildings. The New York Times recently ran an interesting article on this subject which we have posted. UN headquarters in New York is in an especially dilapidated state, though the buildings are architectural landmarks. Roofs leak, there are no fire sprinklers, walls are crumbling, and mechanical systems are close to breakdown. The Secretary General recently asked for budget authorization to pay for a few of the most urgent repairs. But a really thorough job to fix and modernize the buildings would cost an estimated $800 million - far more than the UN can afford in its straightened financial condition.
On Tuesday, October 26, ECOSOC finally held a meeting to decide the fate of Christian Solidarity International, the NGO that broke rules at last spring's Commission on Human Rights by inviting Sudanese rebel leader John Garang to speak in CSI's name. The intergovernmental Committee on NGOs, responding to a protest by Sudan, had twice ruled that CSI's consultative status should be withdrawn. But within ECOSOC, the larger, parent body that must pass final judgement, many member states opposed such a draconian measure. Ambassador Paolo Fulci of Italy, ECOSOC President, said privately on several occasions: "I don't believe in the death penalty."
Most delegations favored some kind of sanction against CSI, but many opposed expulsion. For weeks, intensive negotiations took place in a search for a compromise. Canada, the US, Ireland, Germany, Belgium, New Zealand and others favored leniency, while Cuba, Syria, Sudan, China, Russia, Turkey and Japan, and others, favored expulsion. Eventually a majority formed around a proposal for a two-year "suspension." But CSI rejected any compromise and the vote finally went forward on the original, harsher resolution. It passed, with 26 votes in favor, 14 against, and 12 abstentions. Strangely, the EU split in the voting. While the EU delivered a strong majority statement favoring the "no" position, Italy, France and Belgium disappointed NGOs by abstaining. CSI had few fans among the NGO community, especially after its inept and hostile behavior in dealing with the Committee on NGOs and ECOSOC. But we were sorry that the vote stripped an NGO of its accreditation after only a single incident. The rules clearly called for a "pattern of behavior" and should have been respected. A dangerous precedent has now been set.
On Wednesday, October 27, our friend Ambassador Juan Somavia, Director General of the International Labour Organisation and former Chilean UN ambassador, gave a briefing at the UN. He spoke about his new program of reforms at the ILO, including strengthened core labor standards and stronger rights for women workers. While he was Chilean ambassador, Somavia served two years as President of ECOSOC, two on the bureau of ECOSOC, two as the top figure in the World Summit for Social Development and two years on the Security Council, during a total of nine years in New York -- an amazing record. Though he is off to an impressive start at the ILO, he will face great challenges in protecting workers during this era, when workers' incomes and conditions are generally worsening and corporate power is more concentrated and unaccountable than ever.
Among our web offerings this week, we address income polarization through several excellent articles, including two revealing pieces from the New York Times about major-domos for the mega-rich. The days of the loyal family butler are long gone. Instead, new types of servants are emerging, with six-figure salaries and responsibilities fit for a new hi-tech, globalizing world. One employer wanted someone who could also pilot the family helicopter. Special academies are springing up to train these new all-purpose aides, who must, among other things, gently coach their employers in the social graces not learned while scrambling to the top.
In another offering this week, we post a statement by Jeffrey Garten, Dean of the Yale School of Management, raising questions about the enormous power resulting from the current round of global mergers. Published originally as an "op-ed" piece in the New York Times, Garten's statement speaks about the "unchecked political influence of the new global goliaths," an interesting perspective, considering it comes from a former Clinton Administration Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade. As Garten points out, huge mergers such as Citibank-Travellers, Mobil-Exxon, Daimler Benz-Chrysler, Sumitomo Bank-Sakura Bank, MCI Worldcom-Sprint and Total-Fina-Elf are changing the scale of global companies and shrinking the relative size and power of nation states and of intergovernmental organizations like the UN. General Motors, with 1997 revenues of $178 billion towers above the United Nations, with its minuscule regular budget of just $1.1 billion. Even the UN system as a whole, with 1997 combined budgets of $10.3 billion, seems a pygmy in comparison.
Last week, we spoke of the diamond merchants and arms dealers supporting the rebels of Jonas Savimbi in Angola. This week, we post stories about action in Southern Africa to tighten the UN diamond and arms embargo and an announcement by the DeBeers diamond cartel that they will no longer purchase Angola diamonds. But late-breaking news suggests that past efforts by Ambassador Fowler of Canada and the Angola Sanctions Committee may have already had an impact on the war.
Reports on Friday, October 29, confirmed that an Angolan army counter-offensive has pushed Savimbi's rebel UNITA movement from its strongholds in the central highlands of Angola, bringing immediate relief to the hundreds of thousands of people who had fled to government controlled cities for safety. The threat of mass starvation in the cities of Malange, Kuito and Huambo has receded, as supplies have begun to get through, although there is still a desperate need for humanitarian aid. Meanwhile, the city of Andulo, Savimbi's headquarters and the site of his "White Palace," fell to government forces. UNITA's flight reportedly left behind large supplies of war materiel. It will be interesting to learn whether procurement records have been left as well and whether arms and other supplies can be traced to their origins, so as to prosecute the sanctions-busters and further tighten the embargo. Perhaps at last, we will see the end of this murderous civil war and the years of suffering it has produced.
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