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Proposed UN Reform Worries Geneva Diplomats- UN Reform - Global Policy Forum Proposed UN Reform Worries Geneva Diplomats
The News
October 25, 2002
A proposed UN consolidation of its public information centers may hurt the organizations' ability to protect human rights, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and diplomats said Thursday.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has proposed streamlining the organization's 71 world-wide information centers to "strengthen" their work, which could result in the consolidation of 13 western European centers into one regional center. Diplomats in Geneva, the UN's European headquarters, see the move as a stranglehold on information from UN headquarters in New York.
The report does not say where a regional public information center would be located, but Brussels "is one of the possible options," said Marie Heuze, director of the UN information service in Geneva.
The Geneva center "is not at all affected by this reform," Heuze said, but diplomats are still fearful. "We support the secretary general in his rationalization efforts, but this regrouping can only take place in Geneva," Jean-Marc Boulgaris, Switzerland's ambassador to the UN, told AFP in an interview.
France and Germany called on the EU to remain "vigilant" of the reform, a diplomatic source in Geneva said, adding that EU states fear the creation of a "super information center in New York."
NGOs fear that a change would be "a step back" in the protection of human rights, according to Antoine Madelin of the International Federation of Human Rights. The proposed reform would lessen states' obligation to present reports on their human rights efforts to various ad hoc and UN committees, which the reform proposal calls "heavy obligations."
